Guardsman Credited With Saving Life of Choking Baby : Emergency: Jason Barton and a colleague visit the boy and his parents a month after the rescue at a tent city.

The last time Staff Sgt. Andrew Barajas and Specialist Jason Barton of the National Guard saw 3-month-old Jeffrey Barcenas was at a tent city at Lanark Recreation Center after the earthquake. The infant was convulsing and choking.

But on Thursday, nearly a month later, the two guardsmen saw a healthy--and bawling--baby boy in the arms of his beaming mother.

A pediatrician had just declared the infant fit and credited quick action by Barton on Jan. 23 for saving the child’s life.

“This makes everything I learned in the military well worth it,” said Barton, 23, an agent with an Upland mortgage lending firm who is in his first year with the Guard. “To see the child now, and see the difference from when we first saw him. . . .I’m just overjoyed.”

And Jeffrey’s parents were grateful.

“I’m glad they were there when we needed them,” said the boy’s mother, Erika Garcia, 20, as she held her son, who was dressed in a Cookie Monster shirt and wore Mickey Mouse booties.

“I just thank God and them,” the boy’s father, Efrain Barcenas, 25, said, and then hugged Barajas.

Barajas and Barton, assigned to the Army National Guard’s Company B 240 Signal Battalion out of Burbank, were putting up tents at Lanark Park six days after the Jan. 17 quake forced thousands to flee to the safety of the outdoors.

Shortly after noon that day, Barton, who is Red Cross-certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and has taken emergency medical training classes, had just stabilized a child who had been suffering from a high fever and heat exhaustion. He was walking back to his unit when Barajas brought Jeffrey to him.

“His face was reddish and he looked like he was panicking,” Barton recalled. “He was choking on his own saliva.”

The mother told Barajas in Spanish that Jeffrey had a cold and a cough from sleeping outside in the park since the quake, and that she had given the baby a small dose of adult cough medicine.

Seeing that the infant was having difficulty swallowing, Barton picked up the child and held him in his arms face down. With paramedics en route, Barton put his little finger in the baby’s mouth to clear it and allow the saliva to flow downward. He held that position until paramedics arrived and took the child to nearby West Valley Hospital and Health Center, where he was stabilized.

On Thursday, Garcia and Barcenas brought their child back to the hospital for a follow-up exam. Pediatrician Mojdeh Zafaranchi said Jeffrey was fine and should not suffer any aftereffects from his near-death experience.

“He could have died within a few minutes if (Barton) had not cleared the baby’s passageway,” Zafaranchi said. “He did the right thing at the right time.”

Meanwhile, Barton, who did not even know the child’s name until Thursday, downplayed his heroism.

“I just reacted as if it was my own kid,” said Barton, the father of two children ages 3 and 2. “I’m just a citizen-soldier. It’s part of the job to save and defend lives.”