Ansonia Police Officer Joseph Jackson’s nickname is “Action” — and for good reason.
His quick thinking Wednesday (March 20) afternoon at a North Main Street residence saved the life of 8‑day-old Jaynie Marie Perez, according to the baby’s family.
Perez’s mother, Jayni Alvarez, said Friday (March 22) that she had just fed her daughter and put her down for a nap Wednesday about 2:30 p.m. when she heard the child make a noise. She went to check on the child, and was horrified by what she saw.
“She was purple and red in the face, and her lips were blue,” Alvarez, who was home with her fiance at the time, said. “I gave her to her father, we didn’t know what to do. I went outside to call 911 to get an ambulance over here.”
The worst fears parents could have raced through their minds.
“It was horrible,” Alvarez said. “Me and her father just thought the worst. We thought she wasn’t going to make it. We didn’t know what to do, what to expect.”
Fortunately, Jackson was just around the corner, heard the call come in, and sped to the scene “in a matter of seconds,” Alvarez said.
“I didn’t even see him come up the stairs,” she said of Jackson’s arrival at her apartment. “It seemed like he flew up the stairs.”
Jackson was in disbelief himself when he got to the home, he said Friday (March 22).
“When I arrived, the mother met me at the door, yelling, hysterical, that her baby’s not breathing,” Jackson said. “I’m saying to myself, this can’t be happening.”
Jackson took the infant and began giving her light compressions near its heart.
He then turned her over and did the same thing on her back, but to no avail.
So he turned Jaynie over again, and again gave her light compressions on her chest.
Then, relief.
“Foam came out of her mouth, and her eyes opened up,” he said.
An ambulance arrived and took Jaynie to Griffin Hospital, Alvarez said, and then to Yale-New Haven Hospital, for observation.
What precisely triggered Wednesday’s choking scare wasn’t clear, but the baby was fine after a checkup at the hospital.
She was discharged Thursday and is doing well.
Alvarez said she could tell Jackson, a father himself, took the call personally.
“He just had that face where you could tell he actually cared and worried,” she said. “He was worried from beginning to end.”
Even after the EMTs took over, Alvarez said, “He kept asking if she was OK.”
“After the baby was still in the ambulance, you’ve still got that nervous feeling,” Jackson said.
“You have to do something right away,” he said of the incident. “(People) depend on you to help them. That’s why you’ve got to take training seriously. My training just kicked in.”
And not for the first time.
In 2005 Jackson resuscitated Ansonia Alderwoman Joan Radin after she had gone into cardiac arrest at the Wakelee Avenue pharmacy she owns.
“From the young to the old,” Jackson joked Friday.
The Police Department’s annual awards ceremony is in May, and Chief Kevin Hale said Friday that Jackson’s alertness Wednesday “would certainly merit serious consideration” for an honor.
“It was a good save,” Hale said. “He did a good job. Joe’s good like that. At eight days old, a baby so tiny, in trying to make a save there, you don’t want to do further damage.”
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