24 American Police Beat: January 2018 S ome people say there’s never a cop around when you need one. Just don’t ever say that to a Mom in Minnesota named Kristin Lonsbury. Lonsbury told Inside Edi- tion that she was driving on the highway in Sep- tember when she heard her 6-week-old daughter Elise choking and fighting for air. “I had a mirror so I could see her. Her head was cov- ered in vomit and then I heard silence so I knew I needed to pull over,” Lonsbury said. “I got her out and her little arms just kind of dropped to her sides while I held her. She was unconscious.” Lonsbury called 911. Dispatchers tried walk- ing her through admin- istering CPR, but she was so freaked out she couldn’t hear clearly or follow directions. “I was just frantic and frazzled. I was screaming ‘wake up’ and shaking her,” Lonsbury said. But sometimes you get lucky. Virginia Marsh, a nurse who was driving in to work, saw Lonsbury and the baby and stopped. “I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I saw the nurse in her full scrubs. She had seen me on the side of the road holding my daughter. I handed her my baby and she started doing back blows,” Lonsbury said. Then Lt. Paul Stricker of the Minnesota State Patrol spotted the women and stopped as well. Working together, the cop and the nurse were able to revive the infant and get the baby’s pulse back. Doc- tors later determined the child had choked on her own vomit. But thanks to Marsh and Stricker, the little girl is just fine. When your baby’s not breathing, a cop and a nurse can sure come in handy The rescuers T wo years ago, Officer Angela Sands of the Lin- coln, Nebraska, Police Department, found herself with a firearm inches from her heart. Officer Sands was re- sponding to a call for back up for a suspect that was found to have several warrants out for his arrest. The responding officers attempted to arrest the suspect and search his person when the suspect started to assault the of- ficers. Angela and her sergeant were fighting with the suspect when he grabbed a gun from his waistband. The suspect was able to get a shot off, hitting another officer in the arm. Officer Sands and her sergeant then fought to control the suspect’s hand that held the gun to disable the suspect from firing at the other officer again. In the continued strug- gle, the suspect fired a shot point blank at An- gela’s heart. The round passed through her coat, her metal badge, and was finally deflected by the metal plates in her bullet- proof vest. Both Sands and her sergeant returned fire and eliminated the threat. “I’m confident I would have been shot in the chest if I had not been wearing ka, Police Department for her professionalism and courageous actions when a lethal encounter was thrust upon her. At the time of the incident, Officer Sands had served with the department for three years. Angela was also selected as the 2017 IACP/DuPont KEVLAR Survivors’ Club Honoree at the 124th IACP Annual Conference and Expo- sition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “I am humbled and honored to be named the Survivor’s Club Honor- ee. I appreciate the work the IACP and DuPont have done to educate law enforcement on the im- portance of wearing a vest every day and every shift.” Since 1987, IACP has partnered with DuPont to honor those police officers who have sur- vived life-threatening in- cidents because they were wearing their personal body armor. Officer Angela Sands Thanks to her personal body armor she’s still alive my vest that night,” Sands explains. “The round was deflected away from my heart, by my vest, and ul- timately collided with my radio mic, which explod- ed, causing survivable facial and oral injuries.” Sands was honored with the Medal of Honor from the Awards Committee of the Lincoln, Nebras- ★ ★