It was an unlikely meeting with an even more unlikely outcome.
“An SUV pulled right in front of my patrol vehicle very suddenly,” California Highway Patrol Officer Ed Ketchum said. “As soon as I got out, a gentleman from the driver seat and a lady from the passenger seat walked toward me, and the gentleman said, ‘My son’s not breathing.'"
Ketchum has been with CHP for more than two decades. The majority of that time has been spent in the Campo area. It is where he met Larry, Rebeca and 11-month-old Vincent Loya for the first time.
“Before I could even grab my radio, the wife put their infant in my hands,” Ketchum recalled. “I immediately placed the child upside down and administered three back blows and, oh my gosh, the baby started crying. It went from unconscious, lethargic, to start crying. What a wonderful feeling that was.”
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It was around midday on Nov. 1, 2021, Ketchum was parked on Buckman Springs Road, just north of Oak Drive. After Ketchum was able to revive the baby, he requested paramedics be dispatched to the scene and placed the infant in a rescue position in the back seat of his patrol vehicle. Ketchum monitored Vincent, and again, he became non-responsive. The CHP officer then performed a sternum rub on the infant, and he began to cry again.
“Crying, in this case, is a good thing,” Ketchum remembered he said to Vincent’s mother, Rebeca, at the time.
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Cal Fire 42 out of Lake Morena and Mercy Medic 47 responded to the scene and took the child to Rady Children's Hospital for further evaluation. The boy not only survived but fully recovered. He is about to become a 4-year-old and is celebrating firsts that may have never happened, like his first day of preschool.
“You know if [Ed] wasn’t there, we don’t know what we would have [done]. You know, we would have gone to the wrong station and every minute counted, I guess. Every second,” Rebeca and Larry Loya said back-and-forth while they remembered that scary day.
They said Vincent stopped breathing after a tantrum, then they called 911, but got into their car because they figured it would take first responders too long to get to their home.
“We panicked. We had just moved here, so we didn’t know what to do,” Larry Loya said.
Ketchum and the Loya family reconnected for Vincent’s first day of preschool. Ketchum, and several other CHP officers, were waiting for the now 3-year-old to get out of school to reunite.
“Very thankful,” Larry Loya said, as he held Vincent in front of a CHP car after he was released and fist-bumped with Ketchum.
“In this line of work, you don’t get time to sit there and think out a game plan,” Ketchum added. “A lot of the time you have to react.”
