Lupe Covarrubias is a hero.

The Lompoc resident ensured that a family's firstborn lived to see a 6-month birthday.

One Saturday afternoon in May, the 24-year-old Covarrubias, in his third season as a Hot Shot, a Vandenberg Air Force Base Wildland Firefighter, was off-duty, browsing at Wal-Mart in Santa Maria.

His mother and sister, shopping for an armoire, were finished and heading for the parking lot while Convarrubias trailed behind, looking at CDs.

“I was in the aisle over and I heard a commotion by the pharmacy,” he said.

A dark-haired young mother was frantically bouncing her baby crying, “My baby is dying! My baby is dying!” as onlookers gathered.

Covarrubias, a student in an emergency medical class at Santa Barbara City College, walked over to the group.

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“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.”

The infant's eyes were clamped shut.

“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.”

The one-time Lompoc High football player then reversed the baby, placing her back in his right palm with head down at the same angle as before.

Again with his left hand he delivered five chest thrusts. “You put pressure on the sternum. You continue that for about a minute.”

Time slowed and background noise evaporated, Covarrubias said.

“I was kind of like in a zone,” Covarrubias said. “It was like me and this little kid. It was their first child. It raced through my mind that I had this child's life in my hand.”

Covarrubias' mother, Ana, called her son's cell phone from the parking lot with no answer. Then twice more and came to an instant conclusion.

“I said, ‘I've got a gut feeling he's in there helping someone - somebody had a heart attack or some lady fell.'”

Ana Covarrubias and her daughter Sara raced back into the store.

“He looked so different,” she said of her son. “He was there but he wasn't there. The people were crying and panicking but he said he didn't hear them anymore. He said he didn't even hear my phone.”

“I didn't hear the phone ring at all,” Covarrubias agreed. “Everything went silent. I checked later. She called three times.”

In his zone with the baby, the firefighter began to sense movement.

“She was trying to scream but I could see mucus.”

At that instant an unseen hand, that of Assistant Manager John Perkles, gave Covarrubias a suction device fetched from the Infants Department.

“I suctioned it out,” Covarrubias continued.

“Then she started screaming.”

Paramedics arrived to the sound of screams.

“‘She's crying, that's a good sign,' they told me.”

An ambulance took the baby to Marian Medical Center - without a siren, her breathing had so improved. She was kept overnight as a precaution but was released the next morning.

Afterward Covarrubias gave further evidence of his total absorption in the moment.

He could not remember peripheral details such as the infant's color of clothing. He learned the baby was older than he first guessed, 4 months old instead of 1 month.

And he found that she wasn't a girl, he was a little boy.

But those things had not mattered. Covarrubias was focused on the essentials.

“He was in control,” attested manager Perkles. “He knew what he was doing, He wasn't panicking.”

The manager offered a store gift certificate but Covarrubias declined.

“Being on the Hot Shots I've learned so much,” Covarrubias said. “This could happen to anybody. You have to learn to stop, relax, take a deep breath and see the big picture. I did a size-up in my head.”

Covarrubias may be a hero but he does not see himself in the Hall of Fame.

“It feels good. It's a weird feeling - not one where you want a crown on your head, but I did something for another family.”

The baby's parents could not be reached. The Santa Maria Fire Department declined to release the child's name for privacy reasons.

Correspondent John McReynolds can be reached at 736-6352 or 10655@impulse.net

July 4, 2006