By Chris Biderman
The Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jazmin Quijano went into labor far sooner than expected. The 26-year-old from Stockton had been pregnant for just 22 weeks of the normal nine-month term. At 9 p.m. on June 21, she went to the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Stockton knowing her unborn child’s life was in the balance.
Hours went by, Quijano said, before she realized she wouldn’t be admitted and she was forced to look for care elsewhere. Quijano got in the car with the father of the child and headed north on Highway 99 toward Sacramento. At roughly 2:00 a.m., and 10 minutes away from downtown Sacramento, the baby was born while the car was pulled over on the side of the road.
“It was scary,” Quijano said Wednesday. “What happens if you don’t survive? Because she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even moving at all.”
The baby was unresponsive. But 911 had been called and the authorities were en route.
“When we arrived, the baby had no pulse and was not breathing,” said Sacramento firefighter Adrienne Bisharat, who was among the group of first responders. “So we had to start CPR. So we grabbed the baby from mom, and then three of us jumped into the back of the ambulance and drove to UC Davis (hospital) with the baby under CPR the whole time.”
After 145 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the baby Quijano named Daleyza, was released from the hospital on Nov. 15 with an unlikely clean bill of health. Daleyza is a Spanish name that translates to “delightful.”
Quijano and the baby on Wednesday reunited with the firefighters who helped save her life at the Sacramento Fire Station 6 in Oak Park. The event drew tears of joy from the firefighters who were surprised by the visitors. Recently elected Mayor Kevin McCarty and City Councilmember Caity Maple, who represents the area, were in attendance.
“Those are her first family,” Quijano said as the firefighters who saved the baby’s life took turns holding her. “They’re going to always be family no matter what. … And she’s always going to hear about them when she’s older and she has her own kids. We’re always going to talk about this.”
Born prematurely at 22 weeks, Daleyza faced long odds. A Stanford Study in 2022 found that babies delivered at 22 weeks — roughly 18 weeks early — survived at a rate of 28%. That rate is roughly 50% at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, said Dr. Steven McElroy, the chief of the neonatology department who oversaw Daleyza’s months of treatment.
“But that’s assuming that you’re born in the hospital with us, with all the equipment, with everything else,” McElroy said. “If I had to come up with a number for you, for this situation, (the survival rate) had been zero. Like the odds of being able to survive what she did and do as well as she did is zero. So this is truly an amazing, amazing thing.”
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Saving the baby was made possible by the speed of the paramedics and firefighters who responded to Quijano’s call. McElroy said less than 10 minutes passed from the time authorities received word from 911 dispatchers to when firefighters took the baby in the ambulance. It was a short ride to the hospital where the baby was passed off to doctors working the overnight shift.
“We immediately took the baby and then started to do all of the things we need to do as far as resuscitation, including intubating and putting them on specialized ventilators, getting IVs, putting them on specialized fluids,” McElroy said. “But I cannot stress enough how much the team did. Because when you’re born that little, you can’t maintain a temperature because you don’t have any ability. Yet, the baby came in completely warm. The baby came in with good vital signs, and that’s really all a function and a factor of the team. They did a great job in the field.”
Bisharat was among the group of firefighters including Jeff Switkowski, Eric Chin and Lukas Troutman who received “field save” coins given out to firefighters when they save lives. The firefighters had been kept in the loop about Daleyza’s status and her long recovery but were surprised to find out about the visit Wednesday.
“It just feels really nice to see her and see mom,” Bisharat said. “And mom is radiating appreciation. … You can feel it. And feeling that from her makes it real. And so seeing how big the baby is, it’s like, ‘oh my God.’ She could just not be here.
“There’s a different version of the story where she’s not here.”
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