Joyful Reunion for Calif. Family, Firefighters Who Delivered Baby

Sept. 11--Max Stiles entered the world surrounded by his family and three Santa Rosa firefighters in a Radio Shack parking lot near Coddingtown Mall.

On Thursday, the 13-day-old infant was once again back in the arms of Fire Engineer Jaimie Harcos, who caught him in the passenger seat of a Kia Sorento SUV after his mother Desiree Stiles worked very hard during an utterly intense, if brief, 15-minute labor.

The Stiles family and their team of firefighter-midwives -- Harcos, Capt. Jon Aarshelm and Firefighter Konstantin Zherebnenkov -- were reunited Thursday at Station 10 off Corporate Center Parkway in west Santa Rosa to celebrate their chance encounter and the picture-perfect, healthy baby boy.

"There was a period of time when the baby wasn't breathing yet," Harcos said, recounting a tense moment at the birth as he looked down at the sleeping bundle in his arms.

"I remember that silence," Desiree Stiles said.

Harcos recalled rubbing the infant's back until, finally, Max Stiles let out a first wail.

"That was a moment of euphoria," Harcos said.

The 8-pound, 12-ounce boy is the youngest of three sons for Desiree and James Stiles. He was born at 8:14 a.m. on Aug. 28 at the parking lot near West Steele Lane and Range Avenue, just over halfway between his family's home off West Third Street and their destination that day, Kaiser Hospital on Bicentennial Way.

"It's my third kid and apparently they come out fast," Desiree Stiles said.

Desiree Stiles, 29, said she had been dilated for a week and a half, and the jokes had been flying at her job as a records supervisor for the Santa Rosa Police Department that she'd probably deliver the baby at work. A birthing dummy used for training purposes had mysteriously showed up in her office.

That morning, the contractions came fast and were about 30 seconds apart when they dropped 8-year-old Kellan off with a neighbor, who took him to school, and loaded 3-year-old Cash into the car.

They were on the way to the hospital when Stiles unfastened her seat belt, reacting to the strong and fast contractions, making her husband very nervous about driving safe. Her water broke near the 7-Eleven at West Steele and Coffey lanes, and James Stiles said he was pulling over. Desiree insisted to her husband she did not want their child to be born at a convenience store, and they made it another few blocks before pulling over at the sight of the red Santa Rosa Fire Department engine.

The three-man crew had just taken a wrong turn after being told by dispatch that they should head back to the station because they weren't needed at a crash scene. Harcos was behind the wheel, suffering jibes from his crew mates for the navigational error. Then they saw James Stiles, waving them over and honking his horn.

"We had turned the wrong way, we were out of our district, it was a pure coincidence" that they saw the waving father, Harcos said.

"It was crazy luck," Zherebnenkov said.

Once they learned the woman was in labor, Aarshelm said he told James Stiles to continue to the hospital or wait for the ambulance already on the way. But Desiree Stiles knew her baby was coming fast.

"I kept saying, 'We will get you to the hospital,'" Aarshelm said to Stiles, as the firefighters took turns holding 3-year-old Cash. "You said, 'No, this is happening now.'"

Desiree Stiles recalled that through the intense pain, she still heard Aarshelm's kind words as he sat in the driver's seat and held her hand. She remembered Zherebnenkov's calm face as he handed supplies to Harcos, who was focused on catching the baby.

James Stiles and young Cash stood by in awe.

Max Stiles took his first breath wrapped in a Santa Rosa Fire Department T-shirt. Harcos clamped the umbilical cord and Zherebnenkov handed a scalpel to the proud father, who cut the cord.

"I will think of this for the rest of my life," Zherebnenkov said Thursday to the Stiles family.

Paul Lowenthal, Santa Rosa's assistant fire marshal, said that firefighter-paramedics are trained to deliver babies and each engine is equipped with an emergency delivery kit. While it's common for the fire department to assist with births outside of hospitals, they are usually called to a person's home and rarely, if ever, encounter a laboring mother while out in the field.

"I don't know if we've ever been flagged down in the field to deliver a baby on the road before," Lowenthal said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.

Copyright 2015 - The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.