HOWELL, NJ — It wasn't until later, when Steve Eckel got home, that the reality of what could have happened set in.

"That baby could have died," Eckel said Tuesday afternoon by phone, as he talked about rescuing a 4-month-old infant Monday from a hot car in a Howell shopping center. The Jackson man, 53, is being hailed as a hero after he smashed the window and rescued the infant, who had been left alone in a locked car outside Kohl's on Monday afternoon. The infant's mother, Karen B. Gruen, 33, of Lakewood, was arrested and charged with child endangerment, Howell Detective Sgt. Christian Antunez said.

"When I got home, I still had the (baby's) onesie," he said. "My wife asked what it was, and when she picked it up, it was still soaking wet. That's when it really hit me." Eckel is a retired sergeant with the Middlesex County Sheriff's Office. He said he's about to start a job as a security officer in the East Brunswick School District and had gone to Kohl's with two of his daughters Monday "because I needed a couple of shirts for the new job."

His daughter Carissa, 16, drove and, like many new drivers "parked about 30 spots away from the store so she wouldn't have to park next to anyone," Eckel said. While Carissa and his youngest daughter, Charlize, 10, went to one store to check out makeup, Eckel headed into Kohl's. He was passing a woman coming in the opposite direction when the woman, Sarah Mazzone, 30, of Howell, exclaimed "Oh my God!" as she noticed the baby in the car. The doors were locked and the windows were up, he said.

"That's when we both heard the baby screaming," he said. Mazzone ran into the store to get help while Eckel called police. He asked a couple of young men if either had a tire iron in their cars, and then he remembered he had a sledgehammer in his car. "I ran back to my car in my flip-flops," said Eckel, who lost his eyeglasses and his Kohl's card in the process, grabbed the sledgehammer and ran back and smashed the front passenger window.

"I had been doing a project, but I had taken a whole bunch of stuff out of the car so (Carissa) could see out the back," he said, but he left the sledgehammer when he noticed it after he'd closed the garage. "Things happen for a reason," he said.

Eckel estimates the infant had been in the car for 15 to 20 minutes at the time of the rescue, which happened shortly before 1 p.m. Antunez said the temperature was in the upper 80s at the time and that officers believe the baby may have been in the car even longer. "Her face was all red, and her hands and feet were red," Eckel said, and the baby girl was soaking wet. She was dressed in a T-shirt and a onesie, and had a wool blanket over her, and the car seat's shade was pulled down as well. Her body temperature was above 100 degrees, he estimated.

