CHP Stork With a Star Delivers

As CHP Officer Martha (Martie) Huben drove into the headquarters parking lot Monday morning, an anxious man hopped from his car and began yelling at her.

“My wife is having a baby! My wife is having a baby!” shouted Martin Garcia.

Peering into the front seat of Garcia’s car, Huben, 27, saw that the woman would not have time to travel to the nearest hospital, which was about a mile away.

A nervous Eloisa Garcia of Orange lay across the front seat, the head of her baby already visible.

“This lady was hurting, she kind of cried,” Huben recalled.

Huben grabbed an emergency kit from her car and raced back to Garcia. Drawing on all the Spanish she knew, Huben urged the 26-year-old woman to be calm.

Minutes later Huben “caught the baby as it came out,” she recalled.

“As soon as it came out it let out a couple of cries,” Huben said of the dark-haired baby girl. “It was really exciting.”

Paramedics arrived shortly after the 5:48 a.m. birth, severed the umbilical cord and took mother and child to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where both were in stable condition.

Huben said the birth was quick and without complications. Huben, who was at the end of her graveyard shift, walked into California Highway Patrol headquarters to a chorus of calls for “Dr. Martie,” she said with a laugh from home a few hours later.

Birthing procedures are part of the emergency medical training all CHP officers receive, said Officer Angel Johnson, a CHP spokeswoman.

On Friday Huben is scheduled to take a recertification class for emergency medical procedures, she said.

“If it’s childbirth, I’m just going to kick back,” she joked.