Thankful People: Hellwege family thankful after son's health scare at fair parade

When Leslie Hellwege thinks back on the day her youngest son stopped breathing, the scary part is how many things went right.

Her 3-year-old son Paxton was supposed to go and watch the SEMO District Fair parade with another family member that day. If that had happened, she says, people may not have realized something was wrong until it was too late. And if she hadn't been sitting with her friend -- a policeman's wife -- she might have been too panicked to get Paxton help.

And if the officers on duty hadn't acted so quickly, it might have been too late.

But everything broke the right way for her family that day. Things went so well that a few weeks after the incident, on a gray October afternoon, she's watching Paxton and her other children, Heidi, 10, and Liam, 8, play on the playground near her house. For that, she counts herself grateful.

"We always go," she says of the parade.

Paxton Hellwege poses for a photo with his family Oct. 9 at Kiwanis Park in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

She had gotten off work, picked up Paxton and set up near the Burger King parking lot on Broadway.

"We got to the parade and I told him he was going to get a big bag of candy," she recalls.

That was the first sign of trouble. She adopted Paxton when he was a baby, and says she just knew something was off.

"He said he wanted to go home," she says. "I said, 'No, bud. We're going to get some candy.'"

Then Paxton collapsed. Her blonde toddler, fine just moments before, was suddenly unresponsive.

Paxton Hellwege plays Oct. 9 at Kiwanis Park in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

"Just lifeless," she said. "And I'm panicking. I'm thinking, 'What could possibly be wrong?'"

Meanwhile, the street was closed. The parade was waving and clanging and marching up Broadway, and her car was parked blocks away.

"I stood up with him limp in my arms," she says, recalling just how thoroughly panic had set in by that time. Luckily, she was watching the parade with her friend Tyra Schmidt, whose husband, Rick -- a Cape Girardeau police sergeant -- was working the parade route that morning.

"She (Tyra) could tell in my eyes I was starting to panic," she said. "She grabbed my arm and took us."

Schmidt flagged down the nearest officer, Lt. Brad Smith, who was patrolling on a four-wheeler. Smith alerted another officer, patrolman Jonathan Brotz, in whose car Paxton was then loaded.

Paxton Hellwege plays with his brother Josh on Oct. 9 at Kiwanis Park in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

"Protocol was to call an ambulance," she says. But that's not what the officers did. She remembers how fast they sized up the situation, before Smith said, "OK, let's go."

The parade was stopped. Officers helped move people out of the street so the patrol car could get back from the Kingshighway intersection to SoutheastHEALTH. One of the men who helped, John Davis, was a recently-retired lieutenant who jumped back into action to help escort the patrol car safely to the emergency department.

"I could see officers pulling children out of the street," she says, but admits much of it is now a blur. Before she knew what was going on, emergency department personnel were having Paxton airlifted to a St. Louis hospital.

She called her 19-year-old son, Josh, to drive her to St. Louis.

"He just let me wail the first hour up there," she recalls. But then he helped her calm down and project a strength she didn't feel, for Paxton's sake.

Paxton Hellwege plays with his brother Josh on Oct. 9 at Kiwanis Park in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

Paxton was discharged the next day, though the doctors weren't entirely sure what caused the episode. It was apparently some sort of allergy, she says.

"Wrap your feet around!" she calls to Paxton, who's standing atop the jungle gym grasping a fireman's pole and eyeing the distance below.

"I have three very safe and cautious children," she said. "Then the adopted one is hog-wild."

She gets Paxton down safely before looking forward to what this year's Thanksgiving will hold.

"We're gonna eat," she says. "We do the big family thing; grandparents and aunts and uncles and that kind of thing."

Paxton Hellwege plays Oct. 9 at Kiwanis Park in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

While the episode was terrifying, she says it all turned out OK.

"God works in mysterious ways, I think," she says.