Woman recounts delivering baby through abdomen wound

As she drove through southern Texas last year on her way to her mother's funeral, Iria Wolnick had no idea she was about to save a life.

But then, just after midnight on July 5, the 36-year-old San Jose woman happened upon a horrific accident on desolate U.S. Highway 77, south of Corpus Christi.

A 2001 Ford Explorer carrying a young family of three had veered off the highway, flipping over and ejecting all three passengers - a 2-year-old boy, his father and his mother, who was pregnant.

Wolnick was not only the first person on the scene but the only other person for miles around. She recalled Wednesday that she didn't think, and that instinct took over.

By only the light of the burning SUV, Wolnick assessed the scene.

Young Adrallis Ortega and his father, Edward Ortega, were injured. But it was the mother, 19-year-old Niser Saldana-Quilantan of the nearby city of Mission, who lay in dire need.

"She was still conscious," Wolnick said Wednesday. "And my first instinct was to stop the blood."

Wolnick, a massage therapist with four kids of her own, didn't realize at first that the teenager was pregnant. When she began asking her about her baby, Wolnick thought she was referring to the 2-year-old.

It was then that Wolnick noticed the severe cut to the young woman's abdomen. A bit of the unborn child's head, and part of one of its arms, were protruding from the wound.

Within minutes, Wolnick - with no formal medical training of any kind - delivered a healthy 6-pound, 11-ounce baby girl.

After a while, paramedics arrived. But Saldana-Quilantan died on the way to the hospital.

Wolnick was honored in San Jose on Wednesday morning by the California Highway Patrol and the Texas Highway Patrol division, who presented her with a plaque.

"These days, a lot of people would drive right by, thinking it's someone else's responsibility," said Lt. Jeremy Rowland of the Texas agency. "If it hadn't been for her, two people would have died that night."

Capt. Les Bishop of the CHP said he had never heard a highway rescue story quite like this one.

"For someone with limited training, to be acting only on instinct, to do something like this, well, she deserves this and a lot more," he said. "It's truly extraordinary."

Wolnick downplayed her heroism, saying that she only did what she hoped anyone would do.

"I just did what my conscience designated," she said, as she was surrounded by friends and family at a CHP station in San Jose. "I'm truly honored and humbled by all of this."