Joe and Jody Schleicher experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when their 9-day-old baby girl stopped breathing as the family drove along a busy highway.
Miles from any hospital the frantic parents were sitting at a red light when mom Jody noticed something was wrong.
“She said, ‘She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing I have to get her out of the car seat,’” Joe explained.
The frantic parents desperately looked around for help and spotted Pittsburg Police Officer Kristin Mitrisin in her patrol car.
Joe started beeping his horn to get her attention and told her that his baby had stopped breathing.
“He reaches out to me, the baby’s turning blue in her face and in her nose. So, he said, ‘please, my baby can’t breathe help me,’” Officer Mitrisin told CBS Local News.
After Joe and his wife flagged Kristin down, the officer took baby Olivia to the gate of her police pickup truck and began the delicate process of chest compressions on a 9-day-old baby.
“Very scary to have your child in the back of a truck with AEDS on her and she started turning blue,” Joe recalled.
A corrections officer then stopped to help and Officer Mitrisin has him pull out the defibrillator but thankfully the baby didn’t need to be shocked.
“The baby took a breath, then there was a couple more seconds, another large breath, and then we got a few more shallow breaths, and then she started crying. And that was the best sound to hear,” said Officer Mitrisin.
“Just thought, you know, what we have to do to get baby Olivia breathing. The mom said her name was Olivia, so I just kept saying ‘c’mon baby Olivia, we can do this.’ And I just kept doing the CPR on baby Olivia.”
With no time to wait for paramedics Officer Mitrisin rushed the family to hospital where baby Olivia is now being treated for a heart condition that will require surgery.
The heroic officer said: “I just know that God put me there that day at that time to help that baby.”
Now Olivia’s grateful parents are praying for their daughter’s speedy recovery so she can come home and hopefully a reunion with the officer can be arranged.
“If the officer would be willing to meet the baby and meet up with us after she comes out of the hospital that’s something we’d definitely be interested in. I feel like she may feel as proud as we are knowing that she saved the baby,” Joe said.
A GoFundMe to help pay for the family’s medical bills has been set up.
Thanks to Officer Mitrisin a baby’s life was saved that day and I hope Olivia can return home to be with her family soon.
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