This story has a lot of exclamation points.

There's a reason for that.

Manheim Township Police Officer Steve Newman saw a car tailing him on the Route 30 bypass East Tuesday morning, flashing its lights and blowing its horn.

"I was driving pretty crazy!" the driver, Patrick Kucharski, admits to the officer.

Newman, a low-key sort of a guy, deadpans: "A little bit."

Turns out Patrick's wife, Amanda, was at that moment lying in the back seat of the couple's car, in the throes of child labor, yelling, "Pat!! Pull off and catch the baby!! Pull off and catch the baby!!"

Moments before, Kucharski had pulled over on the highway to help his wife. But the shoulder was too small and when he opened the door and could feel the tractor-trailers whizzing past only inches away, he yelled, "Hon! It's way too dangerous here!"

So the 29-year-old Frito-Lay route salesman jumped back into the car and barreled on, going who knows where.

Kucharski sure didn't know.

As he drove, he frantically called his wife's midwife on his pre-paid cell phone.

Which was beeping down its last minutes.

The Kucharskis needed a miracle.

At that moment, Newman pulled onto the highway in front of them, entering from the Oregon Pike near the Route 222 exit.

Earlier that morning, the Kucharskis had left their home in Elizabethtown, leaving their 2-year-old son, Isaiah, in the care of Kucharski's mom, to make the 45-minute drive to the birthing center at Birth Care & Family Health Services in Georgetown.

Mrs. Kucharski, a 28-year-old stay-at-home mom, actually wasn't sure she was in labor. She was having pains, but they were different from her first delivery. Turns out they were simply more intense because the baby was coming very quickly.

As they drove along Route 283, she grew increasingly agitated. Then Kucharski heard something that made him very nervous.

"It was this one, just loud scream," he recalled. "I remembered a similar sound when Isaiah was almost born. I recognized that sound."

He called Birth Care on his cell phone and explained what was happening to the couple's midwife, who said, "You're not going to make it here."

At first, she told the couple to go to Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital, but Kucharski didn't know how to get there. Then it became clear they probably weren't going to make it anyway.

"Amanda was screaming, 'Pull over! Pull over!' " her husband recalled.

He hung up on the mid-wife, made the brief stop, realized he needed to get to a safer place and that was when he encountered Newman, and got him to pull over.

During his police training, Newman, 24, who has been on the force three years, received only brief instructions on delivering a baby. What he can recall about it can be summed up in two words: "Not much."

Also, he is not married and does not have children of his own.

"There's probably 30 guys in the department who have kids and I'm the one who gets pulled over for this," he said, adding that the township can remember only one other police-assisted delivery.

It turned out that Newman's police experience and cool-headed demeanor helped him get through the next few minutes.

"He kind of just took charge," Mrs. Kurcharski said, telling him, "You were very calm with your voice. It felt like you were keeping the situation calm."

A few minutes later, Mrs. Kucharski gave a final push and the baby was born. Just before Kucharski's cell phone went dead, the midwife got to hear her first wail.

"She said, 'That's a good baby cry,' " Kucharski said.

Newman handed Genesis Eve Kucharski, weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces, to her mother.

After an ambulance ride and checkup at Women & Babies, Mrs. Kucharski elected not to stay overnight. She and Genesis were home by 10 p.m.

After making sure his wife and new daughter were resting comfortably, Kucharski cleaned out his car's backseat/delivery room, which he said looks remarkably untouched.

The couple is very grateful to Newman, who is taking a little bit of razzing from other officers who have taken to calling him "Doctor."

Newman beamed as he cradled Genesis again Wednesday, when he went to see the family.

"I still can't get over how perfectly it turned out," Kucharski said. "We will always talk about you."

His wife added, "I don't know what we would have done without him!"


Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.