Life-saving teamwork. (The Goodness of America).

Prior to April 1st, Air Force Staff Sergeant Jon Fremstad and Wisconsin State Trooper George Riedel had not met, but their paths crossed that day to save the life of a child seriously injured in an automobile accident.

Ruthie Hopkins of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and her three-year-old daughter, Infinity Abdullah, were driving through La Crosse, Wisconsin, on April 1st when their 1995 GMC Yukon went out of control, rolled down an embankment, and tipped over. Staff Sergeant Fremstad witnessed the accident while on his way to Camp Douglas, where he is assigned to the 128th Air Control Squadron. He promptly called 911, flagged down two passing motorists for assistance, then ran to the overturned vehicle.

He did not see the child inside, so first helped her mother, who had a broken pelvis. When she told him about her daughter, he searched the hillside assuming that she had been thrown from the SUV. When he could not find her, he checked further inside the car where, as reported by the Associated Press, he "saw a small part of Infinity's arm underneath the roof ... near the back window. He used a jack to raise the vehicle and after a short debate with one of the other motorists about whether to move her, he pulled her clear."

Fremstad later recalled, "I grew up on a farm, and I've seen a lot of dead things. She was dead." He felt for a pulse and thought for a moment that he felt something, but was not sure. As he began applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), Trooper Riedel arrived at the scene. Fremstad asked Riedel to check for a pulse, but he, too, could not find one. They immediately began team CPR, with Riedel doing chest compressions and Fremstad applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a few minutes, still with no sign of a pulse, they switched assignments. "There was no life in her," Fremstad recalls, "but we just kept on, kept on, kept on."

Their persistence paid off. Moments before paramedics arrived, they detected a faint pulse in the child's neck. She was still not breathing on her own, however, so Riedel continued mouth-to-mouth. Meanwhile Fremstad ran to describe the situation to paramedics so they could bring the appropriate equipment.

Infinity and her mother were rushed to a hospital. Before long, Trooper Riedel received a call from the ambulance crew, telling him that the young child was breathing on her own and that he had saved her life. "That made my day," he told AP. "That was the first time I'd got a heart beating.... The sergeant [Fremstad] made it all possible."

Infinity had suffered a concussion in the crash. She and her mother were discharged from the hospital on April 4th.