Baby Nikita, grateful parents meet rescuers
The first time he met tiny, lifeless Nikita Shelkovyy, David McEvoy gave him a few quick puffs of air from his cheeks, then pumped the infant’s chest quickly and repeatedly with two fingers of his right hand.
Breathe, pump, repeat. Breathe, pump, repeat ...
“I did that three times,” said McEvoy, a City of Ottawa parking enforcement officer, who not only knows CPR, but has spent 10 years training others in the life-saving skill.
“I thought I got something. I put him on the side and then rolled him back onto his back and I lost him again. I did another set of compressions and after the last one I could see his chest rising and falling.”
McEvoy met Nikita for a second time on Monday afternoon at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, when McEvoy — teddy bear in hand — and two other responders to Nikita’s medical emergency visited the infant and his grateful parents, Yury and Oksana.
“It was such an amazing community effort,” Yury said. “When we got here (at CHEO) we thought, ‘How can we find these people and thank them?’ ”
It was Thursday afternoon when the Shelkovyys were driving home on St. Laurent Boulevard with Nikita in his car seat. Oksana was watching Nikita when he suddenly began staring off into space.
“I thought, ‘Are you going to cry?’ Then his face changes, he starts stretching and becomes completely still. Then he collapses and becomes completely grey,” she said. “There was no sign of life at all. Then I started screaming.”
Yury stopped the car in the middle of traffic on the overpass at Innes Road. A number of people stopped to help, but the first was Geraldina Carvalho, a personal support worker who was on her way home from her job at the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre. She saw Oksana standing in the roadway holding a limp Nikita.
“I told her, ‘Please give me the baby!’ He was completely purple,” said Carvalho, who is also trained in CPR and began to work on Nikita.
“I was screaming, ‘Come on, baby! Come on, baby!’ ” she said.
“Sometimes I don’t believe in God, but he was there that time.”
McEvoy was driving the other way on St. Laurent when he saw the commotion and assumed there’d been a fender bender. He turned on his orange roof light, did a U-turn and pulled up to the scene. As the person more experienced in CPR, he took over Nikita’s care.
Meanwhile, Ottawa Paramedic Service dispatcher Sandra Dinel was on the phone with someone at the scene who had called 911. Dinel had no idea that the baby was being treated by people trained in CPR, so she provided coaching over the phone while directing a speeding ambulance to the scene.
Nikita was breathing again by the time firefighters arrived after being summoned from nearby Station 36 on Industrial Avenue.
On Monday, McEvoy, Dinel and Carvalho traded stories and posed for pictures with the Shelkovyys as a calm and healthy pink Nikita took it all in.
Yury and Oksana took him home Monday afternoon after a fournight hospital stay.
While knowing CPR is an important skill, McEvoy said that in an emergency situation, it’s just as important to take some kind of action.
“I can’t stress the importance enough to actually get in there and do something. Don’t hesitate. Even if it’s just calling 911 or putting the head back to get the airway open. All these things fall into play.”
The day after the “save,” McEvoy was back at work issuing parking tickets.
“You still get yelled at. People complaining about what I do, but at the same time they don’t know the extent of what I do,” he said. “This has nothing to do with being a hero. It has to do with those two parents in there getting to hold their baby.”
I was screaming, ‘Come on, baby! Come on, baby!’