New Lifeguard Helps Save Mass. Boy

July 06--A 5-year-old Lowell boy who went to a state pool to cool off on a steamy Fourth of July is alive today thanks to two young lifeguards -- one of whom was working his third day on the job.

"I was scanning the pool and I saw a little boy struggling on the ropes," said Joe Ford, 19, of Woburn, who started work Tuesday as a lifeguard at the Raymond Lord Memorial Swimming Pool in Lowell, which the state Department of Conservation and Recreation opened for the season last Saturday. "A lot of kids play on the ropes. They play with their friends. They hang on them. But he seemed like he was having trouble swimming."

Ford, a University of Massachusetts Lowell criminal justice major who previously spent three summers working as a lifeguard in Lexington, said the pint-sized swimmer appeared to be floundering but didn't yell or flail his arms.

"He wasn't thrashing. He just quietly sank to the bottom" of the 3-foot-deep shallow end, he said. "I blew my whistle and jumped off the stand and got him and put him on the pool deck."

Despite being underwater for just a seconds, the child was unconscious and not breathing when Ford handed him to fellow lifeguard Noelia Aquino, 19, of Lowell, who began performing CPR on the child with the help of a good Samaritan nurse.

"The kid started vomiting. I put him on his side because I did not want him to choke on his vomit," said Aquino, who has worked as a lifeguard for 4 1/2 years. "He had no pulse."

After Aquino performed a series of 30 chest compressions, the nurse gave the child two rescue breaths.

They did this in tandem for several minutes, having to stop several times as the boy vomited again, until an ambulance arrived.

"When the paramedics got here, the kid started breathing, but it was sporadic. The medic put a (oxygen) mask over him" and they transported him to Lowell General Hospital, Aquino said, noting Thursday was the first time she's performed CPR on a person. "I'm trained for this. And I saved his life. I'm pretty happy about that."

So is her boss, DCR aquatics director John Dwinell.

"Our lifeguards are trained to deal with life and death situations and make snap decisions and both of them did that yesterday and their training showed," said Dwinell, who said the boy, whose name was not disclosed, was released from the hospital yesterday. "If it was not for them and the staff they worked with, a little boy might not be here today."

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