Tyler Wagoner woke up on July 28 with mild contractions, told her partner to head to work like it was any other day, and then watched her plans unravel in under three hours. Her water broke, labor accelerated fast, and Riverside County firefighters from Perris Station 90 arrived just in time to deliver her daughter, Lily, right there in the bedroom.
Wagoner had wanted an epidural. Instead, eight firefighters ended up crowded around her home, working through a delivery that unfolded in less than 10 minutes, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. The crew made the call to deliver the baby right where Wagoner was rather than risk moving her to a gurney, and Lily arrived healthy and normal at 38 weeks.
Lily's father cut the umbilical cord once she was born, and by the time the ambulance was rolling toward the hospital, the mood in the back had shifted from crisis to celebration. Wagoner and the firefighters were laughing together during the ride, a stark turnaround from the panic of a labor that moved far faster than anyone expected.
A Reunion Two Weeks Later
On Friday, Wagoner and 17-day-old Lily returned to Perris to see the crew again, a reunion the station's report describes as heartwarming. Wagoner told the outlet she could not have delivered Lily without the firefighters, and said she now considers them family. She has already invited them to Lily's first birthday.
One of the responders, Corey Stearns, has delivered six babies over his 10-year career, per the same account — a number that underscores just how rare these calls remain even for a veteran paramedic. Out-of-hospital deliveries stay uncommon for individual firefighters, and departments have long marked the milestone with a specialized stork pin lapel badge awarded as a career commendation, according to the City of Billings Fire Department. Hoodline reported on a similar scene days earlier when Utah paramedics delivered a baby girl during a field call.
How Station 90 Fits Into the County's Response Network
Station 90, also known as North Perris City Fire Station, sits at 333 Placentia Avenue and falls under Battalion 1, housing an engine, squad, breathing support unit, and a 75-foot aerial ladder truck, according to the City of Perris General Plan. The city splits its municipal fire coverage between two stations under its county contract, with Station 90 handling areas north of Nuevo Road and providing primary advanced life support coverage for those northern neighborhoods.
That coverage exists because of a broader partnership: the Riverside County Fire Department operates through a cooperative agreement between the county and CAL FIRE, delivering fire protection and emergency medical services across 7,303 square miles to 20 contract cities, including Perris. The department's Emergency Command Center in Perris dispatches resources for more than 90 fire stations countywide and logged 204,010 emergency calls in 2024, per the Riverside County Fire Department's annual report — a volume that shows just how many routine calls a crew handles before one turns into a bedroom delivery.
Why Field Deliveries Remain Rare
Out-of-hospital births are still uncommon in California. Roughly 1% of all live births in the state happen outside a hospital setting, compared with about 1.6% nationally, according to data compiled by the California Health Care Foundation, and most non-hospital births in California happen at home rather than in transit. Medical research published by the National Institutes of Health treats unplanned prehospital births like Lily's as distinct emergencies from planned home births, noting they carry elevated risks for mothers and infants simply because there's no pre-scheduled medical support in place.
Standard prehospital delivery protocol calls for crews to deploy an obstetrics kit, clear a newborn's airway with a suction bulb, clamp and cut the umbilical cord, and swaddle the infant for warmth during transport — steps the Station 90 crew followed as they stabilized both mother and baby before the ambulance ride. Perris itself has seen its emergency call volume climb steadily for over a decade; one operational standards report found calls to the city's fire stations grew 84% between 2011 and 2015, climbing to nearly 5,900 annual service calls, a trend tied to rapid growth across the Inland Empire.
Broader access issues add more weight to the moment when a field crew gets it right. A 2023 California Health Care Foundation report found that labor and delivery unit closures across the state have left tens of thousands of women in counties with limited or no hospital obstetrics facilities, pushing more of that burden onto EMS crews responding to calls just like Wagoner's. For her, the outcome was the only thing that mattered: a healthy, strong baby girl and eight firefighters she now calls family.
