Quick-Thinking Sheriff’s Deputy Helps Breathe Life Back Into 7-Month-Old Girl

A quick-thinking Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy helped save an infant’s life when he calmly told the panicked mother over the telephone how to give the baby cardiopulmonary resuscitation, authorities said Saturday.

Deputy Salvador Velasquez, 29, answered the telephone at the Firestone sheriff’s station at about 4 p.m. Friday and was told by the frantic mother, Tanya Green, that her 7-month-old baby had stopped breathing.

After notifying the county Fire Department, Velasquez remained on the line with Green, explaining how to perform CPR. She passed the information on to her husband, Geoffrey, who attempted to revive the baby, Amaree Green, until help arrived a few minutes later, Deputy Roger Hom said.

Sheriff’s deputies, who were first on the scene, continued CPR until firefighters arrived with the bad news that an ambulance was delayed.

At the Fire Department’s request, the deputies raced Amaree in their patrol car to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, Hom said.

Rescuers continued CPR in the car as the deputies sped through the streets of Willowbrook and intersections that had been cleared in advance by fellow deputies, Hom said.

Amaree was listed in critical but stable condition “and very much alive thanks to the well-coordinated work of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s and Fire departments,” Hom said.

Velasquez said he did not stop to think before he began trying to help the mother.

“All this person said was the baby wasn’t breathing, and from that moment on I just started giving her CPR instructions,” he said. “I was just doing my job.”