Air force "Hot Shot" saves baby.(THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA)(Lupe Covarrubias )

Lupe Covarrubias is a Hot Shot--a firefighter at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's "Central Coast," midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. One Saturday last May, Covarrubias went shopping with his mother and sister at a Wal-Mart in nearby Santa Mafia.

His-mother and sister left the store, but Covarrubias stayed behind to look at CDs. Sounds nearby suddenly got his attention, however. "I was in the aisle over and I heard a commotion by the pharmacy," he told the Lompoc [California] Record.

Rushing over to the source of the sounds, Covarrubias, who was enrolled in an emergency medical class at Santa Barbara City College, found a dark-haired young mother who desperately was trying to revive her unconscious baby while crying, "My baby is dying! My baby is dying!" Covarrubias saw that the baby's eyes were shut tightly.

Covarrubias related what happened next to the Record: "I said, 'I'm not an EMT but I'm in training.' The dad said, 'OK, give it to him' so I took the kid."

"She was totally blue and purple but she was moving, so she had a pulse. I put her in a 45-degree angle with her head toward the ground. I had her chest in the palm of my hand."

"I did five back blows. After that you flip her over."

Covarrubias explained that that meant holding the infant's back while administering five chest thrusts. "You put pressure on the sternum, he continued. You continue that for about a minute."