Buffalo Police Officer Sherry Holtz answered a 911 call Monday afternoon, rushed up stairs to the third floor apartment and saw a mother holding her lifeless son. She immediately began resuscitation and revived the 1-month-old baby. For Holtz, saving lives is becoming routine. This was the third child’s life she has saved in her nine years on the force. “There are three people on this earth who are here to celebrate the holidays with their families because of the actions of Sherry,” Central District Chief Joseph A. Gramaglia said. “You would be fortunate enough in your career to have a story of saving one life, let alone three lives and counting.” The other two live-saving situations involved the near drowning of an 8-year-old boy in a downtown hotel swimming pool in 2011 and a 1-year-old boy who was choking on a plastic object from a toy in 2009. What races through her mind when she is thrown into life-and-death situations? “I say the Our Father all the time,” said Holtz, who is the mother of a 23-year-old daughter and grandmother of a 2-week-old boy and 4-year-old boy. Monday was no different when she responded at 3:25 p.m. to a call of a “baby not breathing” call. After climbing the stairs to the apartment, she spotted the mother holding her lifeless son outside the apartment. “I took the child from her. He was limp. I asked her to open her apartment door and I placed the baby on the couch. I noticed blood beneath his one nostril and tried to find a pulse. There was none,” Holtz said. Because of infant’s size, she decided to first try rubbing the child’s spine and then his sternum, rather than perform chest compressions or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “I was still unable to detect a pulse. Firefighters arrived and one of them tried to locate a pulse but couldn’t. I continued to rub the sternum and after several attempts, there was a pulse. An ambulance crew transported him to the hospital,” she said. Officer Holtz drove the infant’s mother and her 3-year-old daughter, to Women & Children’s Hospital. “It took awhile but the baby started crying, and the doctors told me he was looking good,” Holtz said. A few days later, Holtz returned to the hospital and received even better news. The baby’s breathing had returned to normal and his brain functions were “perfect.” Five years ago, Officer Holtz answered a call of a possible drowning in the pool at a Hotel. “I happened to be at Police Headquarters when I got the call, and it took me less than a minute to get over to the hotel,” Holtz said. When she arrived, an adult had moved the unconscious child to the pool’s edge. Officer Holtz pulled him from the water. “I turned him onto his side with another adult and as we were turning him, water came out of his mouth. It was lot of water and he started coughing and breathing. An ambulance crew came and took over,” Holtz said. But Holtz said her first time of saving a child holds a special place in her heart. On an afternoon in 2009, she answered a 911 call of a baby who was choking. Officer Holtz happened to be a just a few blocks away. “I was able to get there right away. The mom told me her 12-month-old son wasn’t breathing and that he had swallowed a toy. He was blue. I took the baby from her and put my finger in his mouth and felt something far in his throat that I couldn’t grip. I leaned the baby over forward and started slapping his back. Then I tried to reach the object again but couldn’t. I bent him over again and hit his back a little more, reached into his mouth again and was able to get the toy. I then gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a couple chest compressions and he started crying” Officer Holtz said. At that point, two other officers arrived and Holtz, overwhelmed, handed one of them the baby. “I went outside to my car and started crying. It was so emotional.” But the story does not end there. Three years ago, she received a call to the same address on a noncriminal matter, and when she entered the mother’s home, Officer Holtz experienced a sense of familiarity. “I asked the mother if I had ever been there before and she responded with a smile, nodded her head and pointed to her son who was about four years old and said, ‘He’s here because of you.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God. I remember that call.’ The mom started hugging me, and so did her son.” The key to succeeding as an officer is to be empathetic, says Officer Holtz.