6/17/2016
Reed Hollinshead
ITD Communication
208-334-8881
reed.hollinshead@itd.idaho.gov
ITD’s “Cougar” saves baby RaeAnn, older brother...and drunk driver who hit him head on
Note: This showcases commitment to safety, on the highway and off
LEWISTON - The urgent knock
on the door in the pre-dawn hours on that Saturday morning would usually have
gone unanswered. On most
weekends, Jim would have been at his cabin about 12 miles northwest, above
Kooskia.
On that March 5 morning, however, Jim Reilly was still there. He didn’t yet know why, but he was about to find out.
The persistent pounding, at 3:30 a.m., gave rise to fears of a sleepless
malice lurking on the other side of the door at the trailer park off U.S. 12 at
Camp Arrow Head.
The door burst open and a frantic young mother screamed that her baby had stopped breathing. Jim, nicknamed “Cougar,” immediately called 911.
The 911 emergency operator wanted to know where the baby was located. Reilly, a worker since late 2000 with ITD’s north-central Idaho Orofino maintenance shed, told them the four-month-old girl was at the next trailer, but because he only had a landline phone, the father had to bring baby RaeAnn to Jim’s trailer as the 911 folks talked them through the respiratory rescue. _______________________________________________________________________________
Click here for a picure of Jim Reilly.
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“The father was
begging the baby to breathe. He tried to give CPR, but didn’t know how,” Jim
said. The father began performing CPR but was pushing on her little chest
way too hard Jim thought. “You only need to use two fingers over the heart,”
Reilly shouted.
Remembering his
CPR training, Reilly stepped in — 30 reps, two breaths.
“The baby would
take a breath, but then stop breathing. So, I would continue with CPR and
eventually the baby would take another breath. Gradually the baby began to
take breaths more frequently.”
“It seemed like
forever, but finally the baby gasped after about 17 reps, then again after
about 10 reps, then 7, then 4, and finally she was breathing on her own
when help arrived.”
An EMT had
driven directly to Jim’s trailer in the 25-unit campground, and the ambulance
arrived later. Ultimately, the baby was transported by ambulance to
Clearwater Valley Hospital, and once there was taken by Life Flight to
Spokane.
A special commission
“Those parents
had no phone and no car, and no one else in the trailer court did either except
me,” said Reilly. The manager of the trailer court had a phone, but was
gone that night.
“It felt good to
be able to help with a life like that.”
“I truly believe
it was God’s will to keep me there that night. In fact, I was planning on NOT
being there that night. He kept me home to help.”
“I wasn’t sure
why I stayed home that night until it happened, and then I knew.”
“I didn’t do
anything that anyone else wouldn’t have done had it been them in my shoes,”
Reilly said. “I was just thankful to God that I could help.”
Reilly was in
the right place at the right time again a month later, mowing part of the
yard at that same trailer court. Jim was riding his mower down to the
manager’s office when he drove past the trailer of baby RaeAnn and the young
couple.
“I saw this
sudden streak, and it was a rattlesnake that struck at my ankle,” Reilly
explained. The fangs of the snake were embedded in the top part of his
boot.
Reilly kicked at it with his foot, got it knocked off and drove over it several times with the lawnmower to kill it.
“About that
time, the father walked out of his trailer, saw the snake in my hand, and asked
where I’d gotten it.”
“I told him it struck at me as I was driving the mower by the steps to the porch of their house.”
The father said
their two-year old son had just been out playing on the porch, right above
where the rattler had been lying in wait.
“This is going to hurt.”
And even more
recently, on his way home from work April 21, Jim's truck was hit head-on by a drunk
driver.
“I saw her car
cross over the centerline, saw the car sideswipe the pup trailer of the truck
in front of me, and I knew I could not swerve to the left to miss, because
there were cars following behind.”
So, he braced for impact.
“’This is going
to hurt,’ I kept thinking in those moments before the crash. I was right.”
Despite
ricocheting off the big truck, the drunk driver’s car was still traveling at 60 mph when it hit Reilly’s
vehicle. The collision ripped off her own door and fender and the
trailer's fender, blowing her own front tire and two tires on the trailer.
“I can’t believe the damage she caused even after she hit the semi,” Jim said. The collision destroyed her 2010 Nissan Vogue, and totaled his 2006 GMC Sierra 2500 three-quarter ton.
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Click here for a picture of the remnants of that head-on crash. ________________________________________________________________________________
Although he was
injured, Jim pulled the driver out of her car after she hit the 1914 Freightliner and then his truck.
“She was wedged
between her steering wheel and her door,” he recalled.
Her car caught fire
as he pulled her to safety. Reilly then called the ITD district office to
request traffic control and assisted at the scene of the wreck.
The crew of the
responding ambulance knew Jim and made him go to the hospital to get checked
out – Reilly was just going to get a ride back to his trailer house and call it
a day.
Now, about that name…
Jim is nicknamed “Cougar” because of a big female cat he shot and
killed on the South Fork of the Clearwater River Christmas morning 2015.
“Well, I thought the cougar was dead after I shot her, so I grabbed her tail to keep her from sliding down the hill,” explained Reilly.
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Click here for the a picture of Reilly's Christmas Cat.
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“It
was about a mile back to the truck, so I didn’t want the big cat going any
farther down.
“Turns out she
wasn’t dead and she wasn’t happy. I kept hanging on, but it seemed like it took
forever for her to die. My shoulders were sore for a couple days after
that.”
The big cat weighed in at about 110 lbs.
“But when you
have ahold of one, they seem a lot bigger,” Jim
said.
“Cougars are really strong.”