Mailman Saves Choking Baby

A letter carrier in South Carolina went far beyond the call of duty when he saved the life of an 11-month-old last week. When young Eli stuffed a plastic wrapper in his mouth, he began to choke, his mother, Stephanie Cooper, tells WYFF. "I turned around and started beating him on his back, but it wasn't coming out," she says. In a panic, she ran outside—and that turned out to be exactly the right move. There was Chris Brown, the mailman. He "didn't even say a word. He just grabbed my son and did the Heimlich on him and out it came,” Cooper says.

Brown learned the Heimlich in post office training, he says. "A calm just came over me and I just wanted to get this child breathing again. The child was so little, I worried about squeezing him too hard," Brown, a 24-year postal worker, tells Greer Today. "When I heard the baby crying I knew he was going to be all right." It's thanks to their hero that the Coopers can celebrate Eli turning one this weekend, they say. "It was no coincidence that Chris was here at that exact time," notes Cooper. "He is an amazing man." But Brown is humble: "I would have done it for anyone, or I hope someone would have done it for my children." (Of course, letter carriers face dangers of their own: Some 6,000 were attacked by dogs in a year.)