My local fire department is always happy to see me at their pancake breakfasts. But if I came in mid-contraction and leaking amniotic fluid, something tells me the boys would get while the getting’s good.
Not only did El Cajon, Calif. firemen Robert Laatsch stick around, but the rookie delivered his first baby right in the backseat of her aunt’s car.
Alicia Mondragon-Avila, ready to pop with her second child, was afraid she wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time. Her sister, Rosemary, caught sight of a drawing of a baby on a building and spun the wheel toward the fire station on East Lexington Avenue. She was just in time to catch Laatsch, a firemen who just completed his first year on the squad. He caught Mondragon’s niece, a healthy baby girl.
The city put up the drawings of babies on its stations for desperate parents who are looking for a place to drop their child under California’s Safely Surrendered Baby Law, passed in 2001. California parents have up to 72 hours to abandon their babies at state-designated “safe surrender” places without facing penalties.
The surprising brush with babies hasn’t changed the department’s plans for October’s Fire Prevention Week. On the agenda? A kid’s day – parents invited too - even pregnant ones.
Source: Union Tribune
Image: El Cajon Fire Department
