Kansas - CCPT/AFSCME Member Trained in CPR Saves Child

Wichita, Kansas

Ready When It Counted - Wichita child care provider Patricia Drew, a member of Local 644 (Kansas/Missouri Council 72)shown here with her grandson used CPR to save a three-month-old girl in her care.
Photo Credit: Drew Family

Wichita child care provider Patricia Drew knew exactly what to do when a three-month-old girl in her care stopped breathing on a near-tragic day this summer. Just two weeks earlier, at a meeting for other members of Local 644 (Kansas/Missouri Council 72), she received a refresher course in administering CPR.

“She saved my baby’s life,” says mom Courtney Ponce. “She is my family’s hero.”

Drew, 50, says she had a “gut feeling something was going to happen” that day. “All the kids had been congested with the change of weather,” so she was especially cautious. But she had another reason to be suspicious: Memory. When her grandson was two months old, he also stopped breathing. “I did CPR,” she says. “He’s here today.”

After placing the Ponce child in a crib that afternoon, Drew went to check on other infants in her care, then returned to look again. This time, she placed a pocket mirror under the girl’s chin.

After confirming everything was OK, she went to do her dishes, but “something didn’t agree with me, so I checked on her again. She looked normal, but when I picked her up, she was really bloated. She wasn’t blue, just red — a sign of lack of oxygen.”

Drew began CPR and simultaneously called 911 on a speaker phone. When the paramedics arrived, the child had begun breathing on her own. She was taken to a local hospital for overnight observation.

As for the CPR training session two weeks earlier, Drew says, “Talk about timing!”