Mom Rushes Choking Toddler to Cops' Table at Chick-Fil-A. Rookie Cop Knows What to Do
A typical first day on the job may be spent learning about your work duties. You may be trained, introduced to new colleagues, and taught everything you need to know to be an upstanding employee.
Never do you expect something major to happen on your first day of work, but when you’re a rookie cop, anything can happen. The job of a police officer is unpredictable and everchanging.
Each day offers a different situation, and when you’re an officer of the law, you’re expected to be ready at all times. Officer Richard Mayer in Merriville, Indiana, got his first taste of this recently.
On Friday, Jan. 12, the Hobart policeman and a few coworkers decided to dine-in at a local Chick-fil-A. Just tables away was a woman named Melanie Hasse and her daughter, Charlotte.
As everyone enjoyed their food, Hasse suddenly started to panic. Her little girl was choking and turning purple.
“I looked over and she started gagging,” Hasse said. “I could see something kind of in the back of her throat, mistakenly reached in to try to grab it out, I think that pushed it back into her throat.”
The cops were sitting at a nearby table and mom must have seen them and known that they would be able to help.
In utter fear, the mom rushed her choking toddler over to the cops’ table. It was his first day on the job, but Mayer knew just what to do.
He said, “She came running over…I grabbed her and Officer Ramos to my right flipped her over, we did back slaps on her and got food dislodged from her throat right away.”
Charlotte just so happened to have choked on a small piece of apple. Helping the young child was Mayer’s first response as a police officer, and Hesse believed he did his job well.
The mother is no doubt extra grateful, considering that she accidentally pushed the little piece of food even further back into her daughter’s throat.
Had things not gone so well, that could have easily led to a lifetime of guilt.
“This is what he was meant to do,” she said. “To save lives in some kind of way.”
Mayer, also a parent himself, said the frantic situation made him think of his own daughter.
As a rookie cop, he has already started on the right path by saving a life and surely will go on to do great service in his community.
Thanks to his training, a young girl is alive and well and a family is still whole.
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