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Nursing student credited with saving abandoned newborn

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NEW ROADS - Police are giving credit to quick-thinking rescuers who helped give an infant left in a Walmart bathroom trash can a fighting chance.

One of those rescuers was a second year nursing student.

She talked exclusively with WBRZ about the moment she was handed an unconscious little girl.

Cassidy Bergeron works for an urgent care unit in Zachary, a job she's had since high school. Now in her second year of nursing school, Bergeron was still undecided about her professional career.

"If you would've asked me last week if nursing was my calling, my profession, and what I really wanted to do, I would have told you I have no idea yet," Bergeron said.

But after a not so normal trip to the store, that calling, she said, is much clearer.

Bergeron went to the Walmart in New Roads Friday night, not expecting what would happen next.

"You could see the people by the bathroom..." she said. "I thought, something's going on, I didn't know if someone had fallen out."

Still in her scrubs from work, Bergeron said she felt the need to step in and help.

"I was going to keep walking, but then I was like, I need to go help," she explained.

That's when Walmart workers passed Bergeron a seemingly lifeless four-hour-old little girl. A store employee who found a bloody mess in the store's bathroom thought quickly enough to check the trash. Inside that garbage can the employee found the baby wrapped in a plastic bag.

"They came to me with the baby...and the first thing I could think to ask was, have y'all called 911 yet," Bergeron said.

Knowing that help was on the way, what she did next was simply instinct.

"It was turning blue, and I was like this baby is not breathing...The first thing that came to my mind was to either, start CPR or I'm going to give it a tap on the back, ya know, to see if it starts breathing," Bergeron said. "I gave it back to the woman, she was holding it and I kinda just hit it and let her hold it, and you could hear it."

Rescuers credit Bergeron's quick thinking with keeping the girl alive.

"It just kinda went, *inhale sound*, and then it started crying," Bergeron said.

Bergeron said news of the rescue quickly spread through Facebook, but humbly said she's not the only one who should be given credit for the rescue.

"You know, it's on Facebook already, and everybody was thanking me, you know which is great," Bergeron said. "But you gotta think about the cops, the fire department, the paramedics, volunteer people, everyone that was there. We all did it together."

The quick-thinking nursing student never thought about walking away from the infant when she was needed.

"When you have that baby in your arms, and you're looking into its eyes, I didn't know what it was at the time. I mean, what are you going to do, she's already been left, I'm not leaving her again," Bergeron said.

Bergeron said a trip to the store turned out to be just what she needed. She now knows for certain that nursing is exactly where she belongs.

"But if you ask me today... yes, that's what I want to do," Bergeron said. "To sum everything up, there is one word, and that's God. God put me there in that moment, and I don't know why, but you can't question why...but God put me there, baby Olivia is healthy at Woman's and that's all I could ask for is for that baby to live a healthy life."

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