A newborn baby girl with her umbilical cord still attached was brought to the door of a Brooklyn woman's home Wednesday evening by a troubled new mom who asked her to take the child.
The mother took off, leaving the baby -- who was not breathing -- with the stranger.
"She said 'Here you can have her, I don't want her, I can't have her,'" the Good Samaritan told NBC New York on Thursday. "I was afraid -- I didn't want that baby to die, especially in my hands."
The woman called 911, and when paramedics arrived at the Crown Heights location, the baby was in distress.
"It was lifeless, it was limp, it had no muscle tone, blue skin color," Carl Gandolfo, an FDNY paramedic, said Thursday.
Gandolfo said he started CPR on the tiny baby, and it started to cry. The baby began to turn pink and cried a bit more, flailing her arms and kicking her legs -- a good sign, he said. She was rushed to Kings County Hospital and was in stable condition.
Gandolfo, the father of a 15-month-old boy, became emotional as he recounted the experience of how he and his partner saved the baby.
"It definitely hits home when you get a pediatric call -- you want to do everything you can, as if it was your own child."
Gandolfo said when he got home later that night, he woke up his son and gave him a kiss.
Police said they've found the baby's mom and arrested her.
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