Jardine: Infant lucky to escape pizza parlor outing alive

Steven is assigned to a Chinook helicopter crew. He's trained to probe comrades for entry and exit chest wounds from bullets and shrapnel. But his son turning blue was well beyond his training grade.

"If it had been one of my buddies in the field, I would have known how to react," he said. "This ... I didn't know what to do."

Thus, the military hero needed a civilian hero to save his child, and the details of the moment simply blurred.

"The only thing I really do remember is when they carried him to the ambulance," Steven said. "I lost it, and for a good reason."

Little Charlie recovered so quickly that the paramedics wondered if anything had really happened. As they prepared him for the trip to the hospital, Crocker prayed with Kaycee and learned they both are members of the Church of the Nazarene.

"I just thank God that Mandy was there. I just thank God," Kaycee said.

When Crocker later called the DMC emergency room to check on Charlie, she was told it had been reported as "an alleged life-threatening event," she said.

"That's like saying it supposedly happened," Kaycee said. "There's no proof."

Tell that to all the people in the restaurant at the time, including the Bawdons and their extended family, Crocker and her sons and Chuck E. Cheese's employees.

Charlie spent a night in the hospital. Why did he stop breathing? Maybe a bit of spit up blocked his airway, Kaycee said.

He's fine, home in Los Banos and doing well.

When Pastor Dana Crocker got home that night, he found his wife busy working. Her computer flags her when it's time to update her training to maintain her registered nursing license. The flag that popped up first that night? It was for her basic life support renewal, which includes CPR and is due later this month.

No doubt, the computer-simulated lesson doesn't come close to what she experienced. Nor does the computer preach the spiritual lesson, she said.

"Always listen when God speaks," Crocker said. "I did, and that's why I stayed. I just didn't know the purpose at the time."

Grateful mother Kaycee Bawdon agreed and vowed, "I'll never get comfortable enough with this whole baby thing."

Someday she will. And eventually she'll go into little Charlie's baby book and attach a page or more to the blank space where it says "My Most Memorable Outing."

Who could blame her, though, if she scratched out "memorable" and replaced it with "unforgettable."

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or jjardine@modbee.com.