Two families brought together in effort to save choking newborn

By Andrew Mollenbeck

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    ANKENY, Iowa (KCCI) — Two mothers will be indelibly linked by the successful effort to save a 10-day-old baby who choked and stopped breathing at a Sam’s Club parking lot in Ankeny.

Azarayah Israel started choking Monday afternoon after one of her siblings apparently tried to give her a bottle. The newborn’s mom, Lasha, struggled to get her girl to start breathing again.

“I’m trying to pat her back because she’s still not breathing,” Israel said. “My husband tried, nothing. By that time I started panicking because my baby’s not breathing. So I’m yelling. I’m looking around trying to find somebody to come help.”

Several people responded to her cries for help. One of them was Aimee Good, who goes through regular CPR certification as part of being a foster parent.

She placed a blanket down on the parking lot and began compressions.

“I really just had to do a couple chest compressions, and she was red again, she was moving,” Good said. “She was still clearly distressed but she was not blue, she was not pale.”

Azarayah was in much better shape by the time medical professionals arrived. The emotions hit Good after she knew the baby was safe.

“I had a little bit of a cry afterward,” she said. “You’re emotions kind of come to a peak and start to plummet.”

Shortly after the moms parted ways due to the emergency, they started looking for each other on social media to reconnect. They didn’t even have names to search due to the urgency of the moment in which they had met.

Once they did find each other, the two moms quickly made plans to meet in person.

“I’ve been crying all day thinking about it like, I could have lost [Azarayah] if you weren’t there,” Israel said. “I just wanted to personally thank you face to face because it was so fast, everything was going on, so I wasn’t able to talk to whoever helped.”

The moms agreed to stay in touch after their stories so powerfully overlapped.

And for Israel, there is a new motivation to find a CPR class.

“That’s one thing on my list,” she said. “I have to get it done, not just for my kids but for other people’s kids.”

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