Child Nearly Dies in Pool at Care Center

STANTON — An 18-month-old girl was in critical condition Tuesday after she nearly drowned in a swimming pool at a home day-care center, authorities said.

The toddler, identified as Ariel Nicole Moon, apparently wandered into the back yard after a nap and fell into the pool, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Richard J. Olson said.

The girl had been asleep on a living room couch just before noon in the Ale Lane home of Jane Ann Siemer, 46, who is licensed to run a day-care facility there, Olson said. Siemer told authorities she left the room for a few minutes and returned to find the child gone.

She said she discovered Ariel floating face down in the back-yard pool a few moments later and immediately dialed 911. Paramedics from the Orange County Fire Department, who received the call at 11:44 a.m., rushed to join sheriff’s deputies at the scene.

When they arrived, the child had no heartbeat, and Siemer “was pretty hysterical,” Fire Department Capt. Dan Young said. “They found her holding the baby in one hand and the phone in the other.”

Sheriff’s deputies grabbed the child from her as paramedics worked frantically to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation and mild electrical shocks, Young said. Workers quickly detected a heartbeat and rushed Ariel to Humana Hospital-West Anaheim, where initial reports listed her as comatose.

She was later transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, hospital officials said.

The girl’s mother, Andrea Moon, 30, who neighbors said works as a secretary at the naval shipyard in Long Beach, remained at the hospital with her daughter Tuesday evening. Her husband, Tony, a 32-year-old security guard at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange, was apparently out of town at the time of the accident and was en route from the East Coast, authorities said.

Siemer has operated the day-care center at her single-story, stucco home in the 11200 block of Ale Lane for more than two years. She refused to discuss the accident. A young woman taking calls at the house said they had “nothing to say . . . . We have a lot to think about.”

The parents of three other children who were present at the center but who were unhurt also could not be reached.

Siemer’s license allows her to care for up to six children, and on Tuesday three others were there when the accident happened. According to Diane Hawthorne, state day-care licensing supervisor, Siemer has maintained an unblemished record.

Day-care operators are permitted to have swimming pools at their facilities but must have a surrounding fence 5 feet high and a gate with a self-closing latch, Hawthorne said.

An initial inspection of Siemer’s home in November, 1988, performed before she received her day-care license, showed several “deficiencies,” including the need for completion of a barricade around the pool. A follow-up report two weeks later indicated that all deficiencies had been corrected.

“There was a complete and solid--at that time--latticework all around the pool with self-latching gates,” Hawthorne said.

Hawthorne noted that, as a child-care provider, Siemer was not required to learn CPR or first aid.

Young of the Fire Department said Siemer was too distraught when she called 911 to follow first-aid instructions from telephone dispatchers, who kept her on the line until paramedics arrived.

“It sounds like no matter what they (the dispatchers) tried, she wasn’t able to listen and do what they were trying to get her to do,” he said. “She was obviously beside herself.”

Young added that it was unknown how long the toddler remained without a heartbeat and that it would take weeks, if not months, to determine whether the child suffered brain damage.

The manager of the Stanton apartment complex where the Moon family lives--little more than a mile from the day-care center--said the Moons were ideal tenants who were quiet and kept to themselves. Andrea Moon recently had another baby, manager Bob Fisher said, and the entire family moved from one section of the complex to another where they could have more room.

The accident was the latest of several child drownings or near-drownings so far this year.

Jim Landis, a Newport Beach resident who has been working for stiffer pool-fencing ordinances, said Tuesday: “I don’t think day-care centers should have swimming pools. I don’t care if they have a fence or pool cover or whatever. With that many kids, and one of them slips out of the pack--it’s not worth it”

Dr. John West, chairman of the board of the Orange County Trauma Society, said: “Pools and toddlers are just high risk . . . . If I had toddlers, I wouldn’t put them in a day-care center that had a pool. We talk about layers of protection (around a pool) but the little ones can just outfox these layers.”

Years ago, when his son was a toddler, West said, he had just finished putting “the last nail” in a 4-foot-high pool fence when “my little one jumped over the fence. It was a double fence with a second safety gate and he figured out a way to put something up to it and climb over.”

This latest incident was a “red flag,” West said, telling the general public that “no matter how much you try to watch your kids, you can’t be too careful. Whether they’re at a day-care center or on the weekend at a park, a toddler will find a way in the pool.”

Landis and West are leaders among a growing number of county residents interested in stopping drownings.

Young said the highest incidence of drownings traditionally occurs during summer.

“We’re coming back into that season,” he said. “Last year through June and July we in Orange County experienced a drowning roughly every other day. We’ve got to be able to prevent that this time. . . . You can’t turn your backs on these kids.”

Staff writers Lanie Jones, Lily Dizon, Davan Maharaj and Nancy Wride contributed to this story.