Deputy Tickled Pink as He Delivers Baby in Moorpark

Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Gillette was in his patrol car at a Moorpark intersection Friday morning when he heard a radio dispatcher call for an ambulance for a pregnant woman in labor.

“I had been sitting waiting for someone to run a red light,” Gillette said.

But since he was just a couple blocks away, he headed to the expectant mother’s Moorpark address, figuring that the paramedics might need some help. He beat the paramedics and also beat the baby’s arrival, but not by much.

Patricia Niccum, 24, was in the advanced stages of labor with her second child, and her husband, Mark Niccum, 28, was pale when Gillette arrived at the couple’s condominium about 6:45 a.m. The deputy sent the nervous father outside to wait for the ambulance and rolled up his sleeves.

Within five minutes, Gillette, a 36-year-old father of three, delivered a 6-pound, 11-ounce baby girl later named Christina Marie.

Said father: “It surprised me. But I figured he had a little more experience . . . so I left it to him.”

Said mother: “Thanks to Mike, everything ended up just fine.”

Gillette was almost as thrilled about the birth as the new parents.

“This tops about anything I’ve done,” the deputy said at the Niccums’ home Saturday. Holding the newborn in his arms, he said, “She’s pretty, so tiny.”

“He’s been flying higher than a kite over this baby thing,” said his wife, Anne Marie Gillette. “Last December, he saved three guys out of a burning building, and he got the Medal of Valor for that, but he said that was nothing compared to delivering this baby.”

Only briefly did they have a scare--when the newborn did not utter a cry after being pulled from the birth canal, Gillette said.

“They were saying, ‘Cry, baby, cry!’ ” said the baby’s maternal grandmother, Barbara Davis, who arrived at the condominium just as her granddaughter was born.

Gillette tickled the infant’s feet until she cried.

Paramedics arrived shortly after to transport mother and daughter to Simi Valley Adventist Hospital.

Because no doctor had been present, Gillette had to sign the birth certificate, next to the line marked “Attending Physician.”

“I was kidding my wife that now we’ll probably get a bill from Mike,” Mark Niccum said.

In the meantime, the Niccums have started a scrapbook to chronicle their baby’s surprise debut.

“For a home delivery you couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Mark Niccum said.