JAMESVILLE – When off-duty Onondaga County Corrections Officer and CSEA member Anibal Pizarro recently walked into a local store, he certainly wasn’t planning on walking out a hero.
Thanks to his job training, however, he was prepared. Working at the county’s Jamesville Correctional Facility, which houses new mothers, Pizarro and his co-workers get annual training in infant first aid and CPR.
Still, Pizarro never imagined he’d need to use those skills in public.
It happened in a flash, when Pizarro saw people running toward a commotion by the front of the store. He overheard two women lamenting the fact that a baby was choking and no one was doing anything.
He ran to the service desk, where a crowd surrounded a baby who was turning purple. A bystander was tossing the baby up and down to try and help, which Pizarro knew wouldn’t work.
He immediately fell back on his training, launching into action.
He grabbed the baby and yelled for someone to call 911. He immediately put the baby over his arm and started chest compressions. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only minutes, the baby responded.
“I kept doing the compressions, and finally she coughed and started bringing up phlegm,” Pizarro said. “I kept doing this until I heard sirens and the paramedics arrived.”
He said the baby’s parents were standing to the side in shock, not knowing how to respond. Fortunately for them and the baby girl, who was only a few weeks old, Pizarro did.
“I felt I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.
But Pizarro dismissed any use of the word “hero.”
“I’m not a hero,” he said. “I imagine anyone else in our facility would have done the same thing.”
However, Pizarro recognized the importance of his quick action.
“You have to react,” he said. “If you just stand there and crumble, the baby could have lost her life. I just wish more people would take advantage of lifesaving training. It could happen anywhere.”
As the father of three children himself, Pizarro said he afterward reflected on how meaningful his actions were.
“I was scared, and I couldn’t believe I did it, but now I’m feeling proud of myself for listening to my instructors,” he said. “I was thinking of my own family.”
Two weeks after the incident, the baby’s father reached out to Pizarro and thanked him, telling him the baby was fine, calling Pizarro “his guardian angel.”
