A baby was unresponsive at Bluffton Bojangles. Then, these workers stepped up.

Before she went to bed Monday night, Karen Scott said a prayer for the "lady that came into Bojangles."

Scott, typically precise with her prayers, likes to name the folks she's lifting up, but she did not know the lady who, hours earlier, was crying by the soda fountain.

And though medical personnel had assured her the woman's baby would be OK, Scott went to bed worrying.

Earlier, when she'd arrived home to Estill when her shift ended, Scott had told her husband what happened at the Bluffton Bojangles.

"He said, 'For real'?" Scott recalled Tuesday. She sat in the same booth where, a few months ago, she'd received a surprise promotion to "unit director" — her first store-manager gig.

She'd risen to the role after starting as a biscuit maker at the joint known for its fried chicken; now, almost a year and a half later, her coworkers were praising her for her calm and quick thinking.

Scott told her husband the story, how she'd seen a woman crying near the drink station, and how she'd walked over to her.

"Because sometimes people just need a hug," Scott said, remembering the incident.

The woman had a baby and was patting the child's feet, trying to elicit a response, Scott said. But there was none. Scott tried to call 911 but her cell phone wouldn't dial out, so coworker Trevon Shabazz hailed dispatchers at 6:08 p.m. and handed the phone to Scott.

Scott told dispatchers she had a "non-responsive customer." She passed the phone to the mother and took the baby, trying to get it to respond. Colleague Tina Harrison said the baby was "changing color" and "its eyes were starting to roll."

With the woman was a second child, and Shabazz and Harrison got the toddler some orange juice.

"We were keeping (the toddler) calm," Shabazz said. "The (older) girl, she was real good, very well behaved — especially with all the commotion going on."

EMS arrived quickly, in about five minutes, Scott said. She handed the baby to the paramedics and got out of the way.

"It just happened so fast," Scott said.

In a Facebook post made late Monday night confirming the event, the mother — who declined to speak with The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette, and asked not to be named — called Scott "nothing short of amazing."

"I know it can be hectic in there sometimes," the post read, "but they really showed me tonight what community is all about."

Bluffton Township Fire Department spokesperson Capt. Lee Levesque confirmed Tuesday that the department responded to an incident Monday "just after 6 p.m." at the address belonging to Bojangles off Buckwalter Parkway; Levesque said medical privacy laws prevented him from commenting further.

"She's so self-sufficient and so positive," Scott's boss, area manager Danielle Johnson, said when asked about Monday's events. "We're lucky to have her."

Shabazz, 45, of Port Royal, and Harrison, 35, of Ridgeland, said the mother came back in after paramedics tended to the baby, thanked them and told them the baby was OK.

But Scott had to leave shortly after the incident, arriving in Estill as the sun was beginning to set.

After she told her husband what happened, he asked her if the baby was OK. She said she thought so — had been told so — but she didn't know with any certainty.

She also told her "mentor," Rev. Curley Teasdale, pastor of Martin Temple C.M.E. Church, about the baby and her mother.

And of course, she shared the story with God, in her prayers.

On Tuesday morning, she was surprised to receive a Facebook message from a friend. That friend had seen the mother's post and sent it to Scott.

"I started crying," Scott said of the post. "And I just want to thank her, but I just did what I was supposed to do. I'm just glad the baby was OK at the end of the day."

Karen Scott, 51, whose first fast-food job was at a Brooklyn, N.Y., Burger King more than thirty years ago, said her goal is "to make you feel at home."

"We treat each customer as one of our own," she said.

This story was originally published April 17, 2018 at 5:16 PM with the headline "A baby was unresponsive at Bluffton Bojangles. Then, these workers stepped up.."