Police get 6 lb., 9 oz. break from bad guys

STOCKTON - In a city where the police force is chronically understaffed and the jail is regularly overcrowded, delivering a baby is a rare pleasure for a lawman.

"It ranks up there as one of the best things you ever do," said Stockton police Sgt. Jay Wagner, who along with Officer Mitchell Tiner helped deliver a baby boy in downtown Stockton early Saturday morning. "Most of our contacts are negative; this was positive."

Already three days overdue, expectant mother Roxanne McKay, 22, thought she was preparing for a long, difficult labor when she began suffering intense pains around 7:30 a.m. After showering and getting dressed, she and her boyfriend jumped in the car and headed for the hospital from their residence on Charter Way.

They had made it as far as the police station when the baby started to come. McKay told her boyfriend to pull into the parking lot on Market Street and get help from police.

McKay's mother has since questioned the wisdom of that decision. "Police officers are not paramedics," McKay said her mother told her. But she remains adamant she made the right call.

"They're close enough," she protested. "Better than having a chef do it!"

Wagner was loading his patrol car for the start of his shift when he saw the couple's white GMC Yukon pull into the department's parking lot.

McKay's boyfriend, whom she would not identify out of concern for his privacy, jumped from the car and began calling to officers for help. Wagner and Tiner rushed to McKay's aid, and the baby, a 6 pound 9 ounce boy described by his mother as a "wolfman" for his thick head of hair and baby muttonchop sideburns, dropped right into Wagner's grasp.

"When I approached the car, the baby was already crowning," he said. "There was no where to go but my hands."

Paramedics later took mother and child, her seventh, to St. Joseph's Medical Center, where they remained Sunday.

Wagner, who performed with dexterity and aplomb, must have received some sort of special training that prepared him for delivering a baby. Right?

"Whoa, no!" Wagner said.

As a rule, police don't get much more than basic first aid training, he said. Beyond that it's all experience and instinct, said Wagner, who has two teenage children of his own.

Wagner, a 22-year veteran of Stockton's police force, has never delivered a baby in the line of duty. He's savoring the experience. Since the delivery, Wagner says, some of his colleagues have taken to calling him "Doctor."

On Sunday, Wagner paid a visit to McKay in the hospital, where they discussed her son's career prospects and a possible name - she's leaning towards Alfonso, and considering Jay as a middle name, despite Wagner's protestations.

Wagner said he hopes this won't be the lad's last brush with police.

"I'm trying to recruit him," he said. "We're so short right now we might have to kick up our efforts."

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22 with 7 kids????   For the love of God!!!!