Grateful Mother Thanks Waterford Teen For Saving Her Baby

On July 6, Samantha Jennette experienced every mother's worst nightmare. At around dusk, she left her one-year-old son Armani in the care of trusted neighbors at a children's party by the duck pond near Waterford Public Library to run to Stop & Shop to pick up mosquito repellent. When she came back, her son was nowhere to be found. 

"All I could think about was that lake," Jennette said, remembering that her son had been trying to put his feet in it all day. "I was screaming, running through the park." 

Her young son, however, wasn't in the park any more. He was toddling down the road and heading for the intersection of Route 1 and Route 156. And that's where 13-year-old Ortheas Mema found him. 

Mema was riding his bike when he saw the baby alone and stopped to help.

"He was walking in the street and I just stopped because it didn't seem right at all," Mema said. "I brought him onto the sidewalk and sat with him but he started crying, saying "Momma, Momma," so I picked him up." 

Mema didn't have a cell phone with him so he carried the baby in one arm and walked pushing his bike to the nearest gas station where he asked to use the phone to call 911. As it happened, Waterford Police were already en route, responding to Jennette's call reporting that her infant son was missing. 

Last night, Waterford Police Officer Nicolas Surdo presented Mema with a Certificate of Appreciation from the Waterford Police Patrolman's Benevolent Association, a $75 gift card for Crystal Mall, and a Waterford Police Department medallion in recognition of his actions. 

"Without his actions, this incident may have resulted in a tragic manner," the certificate reads. "As a young man, Mema not only recognized the danger of the situation, but acted on it." 

"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't," Armani's tearful and eternally grateful mother told Mema. "You saved my son's life!"