911 Dispatcher Helps Mom Save Baby -- His Own
Posted: 11:53 am PST February 12, 2010

LACEY, Wash. -- A 911 dispatcher in Lacey helped a distraught mother save her choking baby over the phone.

But what's really amazing is that the dispatcher, who was in training, kept his cool even after he realized when the woman gave her address that it was his wife -- and his own baby.


Janna Scott called 911 Feb. 4 when she found her 6-month-old son Jacob choking. She wasn't expecting to get her husband, Chris Scott, but she immediately recognized his voice when he answered. He didn’t have the same reaction.

"Apparently she said, 'Chris, he's choking.' I kind of recognized her voice, but at that point I kind of blanked on my home address. I couldn’t remember it," Chris said.

He went through the normal procedure for a call and took her address.

“She probably though I was kind of an idiot,” he said.

In a recording of the call, Chris' calm voice is heard giving his wife instructions.

Chris: "Turn him face down so he's lying along your forearm."

He tells her to strike the baby on the back five times.

Janna: "He's breathing again, crying."
Chris: "What came out?"
Janna: "A piece of plastic. I thought I picked everything up."

Chris said the training and his personality kept him calm, “Nothing really flusters me that much.”

He said he also kept calm for his frantic wife.

“I was thinking the whole time does he know it’s me? But I didn’t want to say, ‘Hey Chris, you know it’s me, right?’ It wouldn’t have helped in that moment,” Janna said.

Chris said in the back of his mind he has always wondering what it would be like if a family member needed help and how he would handle it.

“Now that it’s over and done with, I’m happy with the end result,” Chris said.

Jacob is fine.

Chris is a Marine reservist who recently returned from a one-year deployment to Iraq.

What are the odds? Interesting situation!! Amazing!