Derek Walker Poff was in a hurry Saturday, July 14. He was born at 5:00 a.m. in the back seat of his grandmother’s Saturn as his Lebec family raced toward Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield. Mom Valerie, Dad Heath and big sister Ashlee welcomed him into the world with a little help from 911.

"About 1:00 a.m. Saturday, Valerie wasn’t sure if she was having labor pains or if she just didn’t feel good, so she went to sleep," Heath Poff said in an interview a few days later.

"About 4:00 a.m. she said she was ready. This is Valerie’s third child. He’s my first." Grandmother Sharon Pool, dad, mom and sis bundled into the car.

"At Highway 58 and Mount Vernon the baby started to come so I called 911," Heath said. As he tells the tale, grandma was driving, sister Ashlee was in the front seat, and "I was in the back and Valerie was sitting up. It was like he was on a slippy slide and she just caught him coming out. I helped catch him. The emergency 911 lady said ‘don’t pull the umbilical cord.’ She said ‘find a rubber band and tie it off about six inches from the baby.’ Where was I going to get a rubber band? I looked down and saw I had new thong shoes, so I took my pocket knife and cut my brand new thongs to get rubber to tie off the cord."

Heath caught sight of the firetruck lights in the rear view mirror. "My mom’s dome light was blue so it looked like something from Alien Nation, it was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. The lady from 911 kept saying ‘Congratulations, congratulations, you’re a father!’"

Heath is still excited and a little amazed as he tells the story. "The fire truck pulled up and then the ambulance came right behind, and they whisked her away and said ‘follow us the rest of the way.’"

Sharon Pool remembers that they were only about two blocks from the hospital.

"They checked him out and the baby was fine. They got her admitted and said ‘just wait outside and we’ll get them cleaned up.’ I got to carry the baby from the door of the emergency room to the fourth floor of the hospital. As soon as he came out his eyes were wide open and seeming to say ‘when do we get this party started?’"

Heath says he called his nephew in Washington state to tell him ‘Happy Birthday’ that same morning. Both boys were born on July 14. "The baby was about one day early; his due date was July 15. He was full term and in great health. The doctor came in and checked him out, checked out his reflexes." At about 10:00 a.m. Heath was told ‘come and get him to take him home,’ the happy dad recalls.

The Mountain Enterprise spoke with the family at Mableen’s, a neighborhood store and ice cream counter in Lebec that is owned and operated by proud grandmother, Sharon Pool. Derek Walker Poff’s maternal grandmother is Karen Davis of Lake of the Woods.

You can see Derek’s birth announcement, with a portrait of the baby, in the Church section of this online edition.

This is part of the July 27, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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