WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Jermya Adams said she's trained as a certified nursing assistant to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, commonly called CPR.
She can't believe she used those skills for the first time on a child Wednesday at the Fairway Vista apartments, which she moved to about a month ago.
West Palm Beach police credit a bystander performing CPR as part of the reason a toddler, who was found unresponsive in a lake on Wednesday, has brain activity.
"The last report is the child is opening his eyes, has a gag reflex and apparently there is brain activity," Michael Jachles, a spokesman for the West Palm Beach Police Department, said. "So that is certainly a good sign. ... We know that CPR saves lives and hopefully this will be the case."
Adams said she was sleeping because she works at night until she heard a woman screaming and banging on doors in her apartment complex. She said she knew something was wrong from the screams.
"I heard a mom, just crying," Adams said.
She said she saw the child and believed he drowned because she saw the water. Adams said the mother crying was a motivator to help the boy.
"I think the most frustrating part for me was simply the mother's cry because I'm a mother myself," she said. "So, simply watching this mother cry on her knees ... I understand that as a mother. So, me, I know the pressure was on me. She's right here beside me. I'm going to do whatever I can."
Adams said she then started CPR on the boy. She said she was praying the 22-month-old boy would live.
"The whole time I was giving him compressions, I was actually talking," Adams said. "I was like, 'God, this is a child. This child deserves everlasting. This is a baby. Whatever you do, use me to be a hero to this child right now.' I was talking the whole time to the child."
She didn't know the condition of the boy, who she described as a blessing. Adams also said she didn't know the boy's family either.
"I didn't expect this," she said. "I thank God that he was able to use me and bring some life to somebody else's life and make it better than it could have been."
Adams said she hopes the boy will make a full recovery.
"From what I've seen, he's already pretty strong, and I just pray that God bless him and give him more days, give him everlasting life and let this right here ... be a milestone in his life because he has so much life to live," she said.
Police said the boy had slipped out of the home through a screened sliding door while the mother was in the bathroom.