New Jersey State Trooper Jorge Recalde was already busy at work early Sunday morning -- stopping a driver for a traffic violation on Interstate 295 -- when Patrick Parker approached him to tell him his wife was having a baby.
“I told him, I just want to let you know my wife’s in labor, so I am going to be rushing to the hospital. He told me ‘go, go, go!’” Parker told NBC Philadelphia.
Parker, of Wenonah, jumped back in his car -- with his wife, Holly, in the back seat -- hoping to race to Virtua Hospital in Voorhes before the delivery. But within minutes their plans changed.
“We went a little further and just before exit 29, she told me ‘pull over I am having the baby,’ " he said. “I was amazed and a little scared.”
Parker pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and jumped in the back seat only to find his wife had already started giving birth. Their new baby girl’s head started to emerge. Trooper Recalde, who noticed Parker’s car parked on the shoulder, pulled over, quickly offered help and called for back up.
“He was just phenomenal. I was the catcher and he was the umpire. Between him and the 9-1-1 operator they really calmed me and talked me through the process,” said Parker.
Within minutes, Vivian Leigh Parker was born. Medics arrived a short time after the birth and transported mom and the baby girl to the hospital where both were doing very well.
This is the second baby born on a local interstate this month. Another woman gave birth to a baby girl on I-95 three weeks ago.
