LEWIS -- When emergency dispatcher Lee Torrance answered the phone at the Essex County Enhanced 911 center, an excited caller told him something he dreaded.

The call was from a Lewis day-care center: "We have a baby that's not breathing."

Torrance, a State Police civilian dispatcher who was cross-training that day in the 911 center, immediately flipped open an Emergency Medical Dispatch card so he could follow the procedure explained there.

At the same time, county 911 dispatcher Max Thwaits dispatched Elizabethtown-Lewis Ambulance Squad and the Essex County Sheriff's Department to the center on Cutting Road.

CPR HELP BY PHONE

Torrance began giving directions to day-care owner Jean Brown on how to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on the baby, 4-month-old Nicholas Thompson.

"I want you to put your mouth over the baby's mouth and nose," he told Brown. "Try to put breaths in. Take your two middle fingers and do compressions on the baby's chest."

He told her to do 30 pumps, then two breaths.

"You really have to hurry," she said as the procedure was performed.

A Sheriff's Department car was already on her road headed for her house, he told her.

She continued the CPR, then said: "Oh, my God. He's breathing again."

At that moment, Deputy Robert Rice was running into the residence to take over CPR.

"Jean was giving him CPR," Rice said. "I held the child until (emergency medical technician) Patty Bashaw got there."

The baby recovered and is out of the hospital, he said.

"Everything came out perfectly."