BATON ROUGE - Near tragedy struck at a community toy drive Saturday in Baton Rouge when a mother discovered something was not right with her one-year-old daughter.

"She slung the door open and she was holding a lifeless baby and she was screaming at the top of her lungs 'my baby's not breathing'," BRPD Sgt. Walter Griffin said.

Griffin happened to be working the event directing traffic. He says his instincts immediately kicked in.

"I mean split-second--that is really like what they say 'it happened so fast'. It did."

With the help of sheriff's deputy Melvin Edwards, Griffin began doing CPR. Several minutes passed.

Griffin says he wasn't aware of time at that point, but was not going to give up on the little girl.

"She all of a sudden just gasped and when she gasped then I could actually feel her heart beating underneath my fingers and before I knew it, she just opened her eyes and she locked in on me and she looked at me," he described. "It was earth shattering for me."

Shortly after that, paramedics arrived and put the baby on oxygen before transporting her to the hospital.

"I'm thankful that God put me in that position and that he gave me the knowledge and the training to allow me to be calm during that incident because I'm more nervous now than I was when that happened."

WBRZ asked for an update on the baby's condition and we are waiting to hear back.