MIAMI NICE!
‘Gut feeling’ led hero aunt to save baby
IT WASN’T until her 5-monthold nephew’s hysterical wailing stopped that Pamela Rauseo knew the boy was in serious trouble.
Within minutes, Rauseo recalled Friday, she was parked on the side of the gridlocked Dolphin Parkway while desperately bringing the infant back from the dead — twice in 120 terrifying seconds.
“When he stopped crying, I sensed something might be wrong,” the 37-year-old Rauseo told the Daily News. “It was like a gut feeling. I firmly believe that God somehow told me, ‘You need to get back there.’ ”
Little Sebastian de la Cruz was screaming up a storm from the back seat Thursday afternoon before the unnerving silence filled Rauseo’s vehicle. The aunt from West Kendall, Fla., pulled over to find the infant’s pinkish glow replaced with a terrifying shade of purple.
Rauseo freed Sebastian from the car seat and jumped from the vehicle with the boy in her arms, howling for help.
“When I got out of my car and I was screaming for help, that’s what was going through my head — we’re losing him,” she said. “I remember pounding on the pavement saying, ‘This cannot be happening.’”
The two had just come from a doctor’s visit at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Sebastian’s mother Paola Vargas, 27, works as a nurse.
Miami Herald photographer Al Diaz, whose car was directly behind Rauseo’s, snapped a series of dramatic rescue photos.
“The baby was blue,” said Diaz. “I heard screaming, but I had no idea where it was coming from.”
Driver Lucila Godoy, 34, left her own 3-year-old son inside her car and helped Rauseo revive Sebastian as Diaz ran through the stalled traffic and found police officer Amauris Bastidis.
The cop pitched in with the CPR, and Sebastian began crying — only to stop breathing two minutes later. By this time, two Miami-Dade firefighters were also on the scene.
The mixand-match team of civilians and professionals combined to keep the boy breathing until he was loaded into an ambulance.
“It’s something akin to a miracle,” said Capt. Anthony Trimm of Miami-Dad Fire Rescue, who was caught cradling the baby in one of Diaz’s shots. “It came together perfect to save this infant.”
Trimm heaped praise on Rauseo, a mother of three who has no CPR training.
“She was extremely poised under the circumstances,” he said. “I can only imagine what it would be like to do CPR on a 5-monthold family member.”
Sebastian remained hospitalized Friday while undergoing tests to determine why he stopped breathing.
The quick-thinking aunt brushed back any claims that she is a hero.
“I did what anyone would have done in that situation,” she said. “It’s that simple.”