Letter Carrier Audrey O’Dell learned CPR for a previous job at a corrections facility. But she never put the training to use until recently, when she saved an infant who nearly drowned in an inflatable pool filled with less than a foot of water.
O’Dell was delivering mail in Independence, MO, when she heard a woman screaming, “Someone please help us! My baby!” O’Dell rushed to the scene and worked on the 11-month-old boy for more than five minutes until first responders arrived.
They credit her with saving his life.
“It was just very emotional holding this lifeless little body in my hands and doing all this work … trying to get him to breathe,” she told the local CBS station. “I was praying at the same time that he was going to just wake up.”
Eventually he did and has been improving since the accident, his family members told her.
With a daughter just a few months older than the boy, O’Dell said she thinks of him often and hopes that one day the two children can play together.
“I hold her tighter,” she said. “You can blink your eyes in a second and something goes wrong.”