SUSAN CARROLL
Arizona Republic Tucson Bureau

ALTAR VALLEY - Gary Widner touched the woman's fleshy forearm.

Her body temperature was too high. Her eyes had rolled back into her head.

Widner was afraid the heat was cooking her brain.

She lay under a mesquite tree. Her long, black hair was matted with dirt and brush.

She wore a pink and blue skirt that reached below her knees. She could barely breathe. She inhaled with a ragged gasp, exhaled with a wheeze and moaned.

Widner bent over her. It was 12:19 p.m. They were 34 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border off a bumpy dirt road called Caballo Loco.

The 47-year-old U.S. Border Patrol search and rescue agent turned to Ruben Salcido.

"She's unconscious, unresponsive," Widner told the other agent.

Salcido pressed the button on his radio, relayed the information to dispatch and asked for an emergency medical helicopter. He pushed the button again.

"She's in really bad shape," he said. Widner probed the woman's arm with his fingers searching for a vein.

Nothing.

He tried the other arm.

Nothing.

The woman's stomach bulged, her chest heaved.

Gasp. Wheeze. Moan. Gasp. Wheeze. Moan.

Widner tied a latex strip around her arm and slung a bag of saline from the mesquite tree. Then he cleaned the crook of her right arm with cotton, leaving a rust-colored circle of iodine.

He reached for the needle in his bulky, green medical bag.

Suddenly the woman's rhythmic gasp and wheeze stopped. Her body was still.

Widner dropped her arm and reached for a breathing tube, shouting to the other agent, "She's going!"

Personal mission

Widner signed up for the search and rescue squad to avoid feeling helpless, the way he felt in 1998 when he heard a fellow agent was shot in a remote canyon, and no one knew first aid.

It wouldn't have saved him; the agent was shot in the head at close range with a .38-caliber revolver.

But it got him thinking. Widner had liked the agent, had looked after him. He was closer to Widner's son's age than his own.

So when the U.S. Border Patrol created a medical squad in Arizona, Widner talked it over with Dara, his wife of 25 years. He signed up for the eight-week training course in 2000 and passed the physical screening and became one of the more senior and experienced agents on the Tucson sector squad.

Since 1999, the Arizona squad has grown to more than 40 agents, the largest in the nation, as the number of crossings and deaths in the state has continued to rise. The rescue agents are making a difference, Widner said.

The agency has counted fewer deaths this year than last. Since Oct. 1, agents have recorded 78. Last year it was 82 by now.

Trying everything

Salcido didn't know what to do. He didn't have Widner's medical training.

"Ruben," Widner said, "if you can, just grab a jug from my truck, and start watering her down a little bit to cool her off."

"OK, OK," Salcido said. He stood over the woman's head, gently sprinkled drops of water.

Most people who suffer from heat stroke go into metabolic acidosis, caused by high levels of acid in the blood and dehydration.

The first priority is fluids. Many patients need sodium bicarbonate to counteract the acid. A defibrillator can help stimulate the electric activity to the heart, but won't necessarily get it heart beating again.

Widner put a breathing tube down the woman's throat. He placed a clear plastic mask over her mouth and attached a blue squeeze bag to start CPR.

It had been about two minutes since she stopped breathing. Widner squeezed the blue bag. He squeezed it again.

One. He counted the chest compressions. Two. Three. Four.

And then squeezed again.

Suddenly he had hope. Her pupils weren't glazed over. They didn't have the look of a dead person. He started talking to her.

"Hang on! Stay with us now! We're going to get you out of here," he said.

"Come on, breathe!"

He had been squeezing air into her chest for more than 10 minutes.

Difficult job

One of the most frustrating things about his job, Widner said, is seeing what smugglers do to some people. They leave behind migrants who are slow, out of shape.

Hours before Salcido found the woman under the mesquite tree, Widner drove that same stretch of dirt road. He got out and looked for footprints. There was no sign of anyone in trouble. No staggering sneaker prints. No S.O.S. in the sand.

Hours later, when Salcido drove that same road, 23 illegal immigrants swarmed his truck asking for water. Some talked about a woman. She was very sick, they said.

Salcido followed a member of the group about 300 yards from the road and found her under a tree. That's when Widner got the call: "We need you now."

Hard to give up

Widner was still bent over the woman, pumping air into her lungs, when a helicopter appeared, kicking up clouds of sand. A second rescue agent came down the path and dropped to his knees next to the woman, taking over CPR.

Eric Bovey and another paramedic from the Three Points Fire Department arrived in an ambulance and headed toward the mesquite tree.

The helicopter touched down. A doctor stepped out and joined the crowd around the body. Paramedics took over CPR.

Bovey rolled her head to the right and felt her neck for vein. He sunk a needle in and hung a saline bag.

They set up the defibrillator and started preparing the drugs. No pulse.

They tried injecting epinephrine. Nothing.

They injected an amp of sodium bicarbonate. They checked her pulse.

Nothing.

"I'm calling her here," Bovey said. "That's it."

She was pronounced dead at 1:18 p.m., 59 minutes after Widner had reached her.

Bovey put his hand on Widner's shoulder.

"You did a good job," he said as they walked out of the desert.