A birth, recreated

Ramsey Al-Rikabi tells a tale without wasting words: The Sunday midnight shift for Deerpark police Officers Mike Conklin and Ed Josefovitz began quietly. No calls. Routine patrol. Cruise by Port Jervis High School to make sure no one was messing with it. Then the dispatcher was on the radio: "Woman in labor. Water broke."

Josefovitz and Conklin floored it up Route 209, getting there so quickly that they beat the EMTs. It was a little red house with a hot-dog stand in the front yard and a grandmother waving them down in the driveway yelling, "It's coming! It's coming!"

Nicodemus Storms' head-first rush into the world began earlier that night. His parents, Emma and Raymoe, mistook the pains for a disagreement between her stomach and dinner.

In the academy, cops learn how to deliver babies. That was 10 years ago for Conklin, two for Josefovitz, both part-time Deerpark officers.

"It's not something you would really practice," Josefovitz said.


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