SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) – A newborn fawn is alive thanks to a Good Samaritan who delivered the fragile baby from its dying mother, performed CPR, and helped it find a home.

“It’s all about not leaving anybody behind,” said retired Marine Gordon Edelstein of Lake Grove. “Kind of a Marine thing, we never leave anybody behind.”

Not even an unborn fawn, reports CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan.

Edelstein played doctor delivering and then performing CPR on a helpless baby deer on the side of the road.

“Just close your hand over the whole mouth,” he said of his heroic aid. “Blow through the nose, and I gave her four or five quick breaths.”

The rescue was played out on the Sunken Meadow State Parkway when a pregnant doe darted into traffic was struck by a passing vehicle. She did not survive

Suffolk legislator Rob Trotta happened to be driving by. The people who hit the mother deer were OK, and he then noticed Good Samartian Edelstein hunched over a baby animal.

“He removed it from the birth canal and started doing CPR,” said Trotta. “It was a magnificent thing.”

“I got a call, a frantic call mind you, from Mr. Trotta and went out on rescue,” said Janine Bendicksen of the Sweetbriar Nature Center. “We knew it was dire that we help this little baby fawn… And when we got there we saw a gentleman performing CPR.”

Edelstein felt a little shallow heartbeat, “and knew I wasn’t going to stop.”

Sweetbriar Nature rescuers brought in the newborn, fed and nurtured it for a day, and “What happened next was even more amazing,” said Trotta.

“I know it’s very rare a mother whose fawn or little one is not born from her will not normally nurse,” said Edelstein.

An unrelated healthy doe in the woods nearby had just given birth and heard the bleating of the orphan.

“We said, why not try to see if she’ll adopt it?” said Bendicksen.

“(She) walked over to it, licked it, cleaned it up, took it as its own and walked into the woods,” said Trotta. “Like something out of a movie.”

“It was magical, like a Cinderella moment,” said Bendicksen.

“I am kind of overwhelmed,” said Edelstein.

The fawn weighed five pounds at birth and is now safely suckling with its new adoptive mother in Smithtown Woods.