“My baby’s not breathing!”

A white car stopped in the middle of the road, horn blaring. As Sergeant Jeremie Nix of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office drove upon the scene on his way home from work, he directed the car to the side of the road and watched as two women exited the vehicle. In the arms of one of the passenger’s was a tiny baby, dressed in an infant diaper and entirely stiff. Nix knew immediately this was no ordinary infant CPR call, and he jumped into action.

On May 9, 2018, Sergeant Jeremie Nix left work late. “I kind of got held up here at the agency because I ran into another supervisor friend of mine over [at] our training division and just happened to just, strike up a conversation on my way home.”

“My wife and I had a date night planned that night,” recalls Nix. So to make up time on his way home, he took a different route than he normally would drive.

That alternate route would forever change the lives of two families.

Nix was on the phone with his wife when he heard “this horn just blowing — there’s this car stopped in the roadway next to me...I look over and I can see it’s a white car, there’s two females in it, and I can see they’re frantic.”

Nix directed the car to pull over next to him on the side of the road and watched as both females exited the vehicle.

“My baby’s not breathing!” He heard one of the women shout. In her arms was a tiny baby, dressed in an infant diaper, and entirely stiff.

“I remember as she’s carrying [the baby] to me, the way it was holding itself, it was very rigid...eyes are rolled in the back of his head, it’s not breathing, I can’t feel a heartbeat...I give him a couple breaths — his chest isn’t rising.”

Nix had radioed for an ambulance, but the more he examined the infant’s physical state, the more he realized he didn’t have time to wait for medics to arrive.

“The rulebook is: wait for the ambulance. But at that point I knew...we’ve gotta throw the rulebook out the window.”

“I just told the mom ‘the hospital’s up the road, follow me.” Nix loaded the baby into his patrol car and raced towards a nearby hospital. He left the lights and sirens on his patrol vehicle running as he sprinted from the vehicle into the hospital’s emergency wing.

The first person he saw was the emergency room’s Head Trauma Nurse. Nix remembers handing off the infant and watching as the nurse accepted the child and disappeared down the hall.

“Nobody has any idea what’s happening. Luckily, the mother...when I took off...had been in contact with the family member that was watching the baby earlier that day,” Nix remembers. “The baby had accidentally been given some medication that was not supposed to be given, and it basically overdosed the baby.”

Now, a tiny infant lay in the hospital’s emergency wing, receiving medical attention for an accidental overdose. Sgt. Nix sat in the waiting room, praying for a positive update.

The hospital’s medical staff managed to revive the baby, who was now being transported to a neonatal trauma center in Gainesville, Florida for treatment and monitoring overnight.

As Nix received word the child was going to live, he finally exited the hospital and climbed back into his cruiser. Inside his patrol car, he was greeted by a familiar voice.

“Are you ok?!”

In the chaotic series of events, Nix realized he had never ended the phone call with his wife, Nikki. She had remained on the phone the entire time, dressed for date night, wondering what was happening on the other end of the call.

As he described the events to his wife, Nix asked if she would still be ok to go to dinner – but in Gainesville.

“You’re wanting to go see this kid,” she said. His wife knew from his suggestion his mind was still on the infant. Without hesitation, the couple rerouted to Gainesville.

They arrived and found the infant with “100 wires on him, and, oxygen, and all this crazy stuff,” Nix recalls. At one point a nurse picked up the recovering infant and attempted to hand him to his mother. “Nope,” the mother said, gesturing towards Nix. “Let him hold him.”

The baby reunited with the man who had saved his life hours earlier. And this would not be the last time the two would meet.

About a month after the incident, Nix and his wife were asked by Nechole Crowell, the boy’s mother, to be the baby’s godparents. The little boy, Kingston, now fully recovered and old enough to walk and talk, calls his godparents regularly. He loves spending time with the couple, who he and his mom now consider family.

“It’s just, kinda snowballed into this, really just a family relationship,” says Nix.

Nearly six years have passed since the day that changed his life forever, and Nix now has more time to reflect on his experience and his profession. “I truly believe that there are people that are designed to do this job” he shares. “I think there are people that just have good morals, good character — they care about the humankind, period. And they want to do a good job, they want to help people.”