On the left, Peter Getz rescuing Josibelk Aponte from a fire in 1998. On the right, the pair reunited at her graduation Tuesday night.
Peter Getz held Josibelk Aponte in 1998, after a fire ripped through a Connecticut apartment. Getz, a patrolman at the time, performed CPR on the 5-year-old victim as she was being rushed to the hospital, working in the back of a police cruiser, the Hartford Courant reported.
The fire was fatal, killing one of Aponte's relatives. But Aponte survived. The Courant reported that when she awoke after the incident, she was "surrounded by her family and the first responders who saved her."
"I did what I was trained to do, what I had to do," Getz told the newspaper this week.
"I almost died, but I was given a second chance at life," Aponte said, according to the Courant. "And it was because of Peter and all the authorities, everyone who came to help that day."
Aponte is grown now, 23 years old. This week, she graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University. And Getz, who is now retired, was there for the commencement, watching along with her family.
"Pretty proud of her, for all the adversity that she has overcome," Getz told The Washington Post. "Both physically and mentally, having to go through that, and losing one of your loved ones, that you were very close to. That she had stayed the course and that she had come out as a shining star."
Getz said he was dispatched to the scene of the blaze along with other officers, who worked on crowd and traffic control. Fire crews who responded to the apartment found two victims inside the building, including the 5-year-old Aponte.
"Josi was unconscious and basically in cardiac arrest, and I took Josi from the fireman, because he was in full bunker gear - there was no ambulance available," Getz said. "And since we were kind of close to the hospital, I was not going to wait for an ambulance, so I had another officer drive my cruiser, and I did CPR on her on the way to the hospital."
It really was a group effort, Getz said. Dispatchers took down the correct information, and let responders know that people were in the apartment. Firefighters made their way through a smoke-filled apartment, he said. Someone drove the cruiser to the hospital, where medical personnel took over.
"This is how the process is supposed to work," Getz said.
He was photographed cradling Aponte during the incident, a moment that was captured by a Courant photographer. And in the years that followed, he said, he kept tabs on her, "to make sure that she was on track." Then, about two years ago, Aponte got in touch with the retired Hartford police detective.
"She started to reach out to me and sent me an email," he said. "I think she Facebook-stalked me, is what she calls it."
And they've been communicating ever since.
"Honestly, a lump came in my throat," Getz said, describing how he felt when he received the first message from Aponte. "It was kind of cool, you know, that somebody would even remember you from that long ago. I mean, I always remembered her. There's a picture on my desk that her mom gave me a year or two after one of her birthdays."
When asked if he considered Aponte to be family, Getz said: "Oh yeah."
"I mean, physically, not in my house," he said, "but she'll always be a part of me and a part of my family."
© 2016 The Washington Post
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