In case she was indeed choking, he lay her on her stomach on the ground and patted her back.

Then came help.

West Ashley resident Dorothy Holland, 36, and her family were running late to Christmas dinner at a cousin's house. She spotted the Fermos' car and noticed the little girl lying motionless on the grass.

While Joli dialed 911 from a cell phone, Holland tried to resuscitate little Jen.

The 911 dispatcher struggled to understand a panicked Joli. An emergency road assistance man passing by, whose name is unknown, stopped and notified EMS for the family. Another anonymous woman, who said she was a CPR instructor, pulled over as well.

In the meantime, Holland worked a miracle. She teaches toddlers at Trinity Montessori School in West Ashley and had completed a CPR training program in August that was paid for by the school.

She cradled the pale baby girl in her arms and blew quick, short breaths into her mouth.

"She must have done one rep and Jen started coming out of it right way," Ric said.

Soon after, a crew from the Mount Pleasant Fire Department arrived. Jen was given some oxygen and placed in a semi-sitting position, where she was propped up at about a 45-degree angle to help drain the mucus built up in her airway.

EMS came shortly after to take Jen to the Medical University of South Carolina's Pediatric Emergency Room.

Ric planned to ride in the ambulance, but he realized he forgot his cell phone in the car. The ambulance took off without him.

So, he thanked the good Samaritans and sped off to the hospital.

There, the family learned that Jen had suffered from a febrile seizure, a common instance in babies as a way to rid their bodies of fever.

Ric said Jen had battled a fever on and off for the past three weeks, but she seemed fine earlier that day at dinner.

Holland, who was now late for her own Christmas dinner, kept trucking. When she and her family reached their destination, Holland kept quiet about her run-in with the Fermo family.

That's the kind of person she is. "I didn't do anything out of the norm," she said.

Along with being a schoolteacher, Holland is a part-time youth minister at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and a volunteer with the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy. She has a little girl herself, who is just a couple of months older than Jen.

Holland did casually mention the incident to her mother, Cynthia Porcher of Mount Pleasant. Porcher said she burst into tears when she heard the news, adding, "I just thought, 'Oh my God, what a Christmas present for this mother.'"

Ric said little Jen is doing fine now. "We're just grateful to everybody that participated. Dorothy was great, but everybody else was, too."

Read it all.