It only takes a split second,
and it's eerily silent.
According to the CDC,
childhood drownings are the number one
cause of death for kids ages, one to four
few weeks ago.
It almost happened in Poway.
A family was in town from Arizona
visiting relatives when they're curious,
2 year old opened a door that
normally has an alarm on it.
The problem was the alarm battery
was dead and what happened next.
Even doctors call a miracle.
Twirling around and singing along 2 year
old Mia Preston is busy busy smiling,
dancing, splashing. Busy being too.
I can't imagine that she wouldn't be here
on a zoom call with me as
parents Aleah and Nick.
It's clear they're still reeling
from the accident. Last month,
while visiting Nick's parents in Poway,
Nick was watching his four
children when the doorbell rang
in that momentary distraction.
Mia went missing.
I got a little bit more frantic because
I was running out of places to look,
and that's when I looked through the
window and saw her body floating down.
You know, not moving.
Pulled his daughter out of the pool.
No pulse, no sign of life.
But he suddenly remembered CPR from a
workshop he took back in high school.
Poway firefighters were called
this. The worst call you could
possibly go on as a firefighter.
Captain Jonathan Marshall says
all life saving procedures on
baby Mia were immediately started.
She was quickly transported to
Rady Children's Hospital CPR
status the entire time. So 20
minutes of CPR administration was.
Probably the most traumatic that
you would think she would be brain
dead at this point because of that.
Take a look at this video doctors in
Rady Children's Critical Care Unit
said looking for purposeful movement
would be the first positive sign.
Doctor Helen Harvey says this
time of year through summer,
they see several children come into
the ICU after an accident at a pool.
The moment a child has lost a pulse,
they perform chest compressions and
you're pumping blood to the brain.
And that's the most vital organ.
To preserve in all of the chaos for days,
Mia started showing more and more hope.
Ultrasounds didn't reveal anything
major and astonishingly an MRI
of her brain revealed no damage.
It seemed like one doctor would come
over and bring two or three to follow,
and they're like and how long was this under?
This doesn't make any sense, that's amazing.
Was released hugging
Dr Harvey and her nurses on the way out,
sometimes in the pediatric ICU.
It can be very sad and so those
moments when you have a child
come back to the ACU, walking,
talking, being their normal selves
and then they give you a hug that
it makes everything worth it.
You pray after a call like this for
a great outcome and unfortunately
we don't always see that happen.
And in this case it was.
It was absolute blessing to see and
actually meet the mother and the child.
And they see the see the little
kid just perfectly healthy.
Her nickname, now Miracle Mia.
In today's world, I don't
think we see a lot of miracles.
I don't think I've ever seen a
miracle this big in my life and.
Now she's walking around
in her house every day,
proving to us that they exist.
If you think about this,
baby Mia underwent more than 20
minutes of CPR started by her father.
It continued nonstop,
even while she was at the hospital.
Doctor Harvey says that is the one thing
that prevented a tragedy in the story,
and if you were interested
in taking a CPR class,
we put up a link to a list of
classes in our area on our website.
Go to cbs8.com and click on the help button,
and that's really all the inspiration
you need to go. Take a class
I know and to think that he remembered
what he had learned 27 years ago as a
high school student all the sudden.
Realizing this much later,
it would come back immediately and again.
It was because he started those
chest compressions that she had no
brain damage, which was a miracle
and he saved her life.
It's unbelievable and you know people.
We talked about this the first
line you had in there was
the fact that it was silent.
Eerily silent people, we,
we see TV shows and movies and we have this
image of people drowning like splashing,
but the experts tell us kids when
they go in it's it's quiet.
It's quiet and you won't notice.
So one yelling no one splashing.
So make sure that you have that fence.
Around your pools.
If you're ever gonna have
children around or make sure
everything's locked up scary wow.