Courtesy of Virginia State Police

Virginia State Trooper Donnie Ratliff helped Kaylia Workman deliver baby Kaydan on the side of Interstate 64.

In what might be called a crowning achievement of his law enforcement career, a Virginia State Police trooper helped a Clifton Forge woman deliver her baby on the side of Interstate 64 on Thursday morning.

Trooper Donnie Ratliff was the first to arrive after a frantic Raymond and Kaylia Workman pulled their 1996 Chrysler Cirrus off the interstate in Rockbridge County so she could give birth. When Ratliff arrived, Kaylia Workman, 21, was out of the car, standing on the shoulder of the interstate and in the middle of giving birth to her second son, whom she later named Kaydan Issiah Workman.

Mother and son -- all 6 pounds, 2 ounces of him -- are doing fine now, thanks to Ratliff and another trooper who arrived to help, R.K. Hawse.

After a local rescue squad carried off the mother and newborn, Ratliff said, he and Hawse "looked at each other and said, 'Did that just happen?' "

"It was an experience," he added. "But we made it through."

Workman, speaking from her room in Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington, said the story began at 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

"I woke up and my contractions were two minutes apart," she said. "I [had] slept through the rest of them."

She said she and her husband and her mother piled into the car and took off for Lexington. By 7 a.m., the baby "was on his way out."

Raymond Workman, 27, called state police so they could clear the roads through Lexington. He later called back to say the baby was crowning. "You need to pull over now," Kaylia Workman recalled the dispatcher as saying.

Ten miles west of Lexington, they did, and Workman got out of the car as she waited for a trooper to arrive.

"I couldn't sit down any more," she said. "At the time, I thought everybody who was talking to me was out of their head, trying to get me to deliver a baby on the side of the interstate."

Ratliff, a 36-year-old trooper who has no children and who said he never trained to deliver a baby, arrived at 8:06 a.m. and rushed to assist Workman.

"I stood and gave birth, and he stood on one side and my mother stood on the other," Workman said. "The baby dropped into my pajamas."

Ratliff wrapped the infant in one of the emergency blankets from his car. The rescue squad then arrived to take Workman and Kaydan to the hospital. She said she expects that she and her baby will be released today.

As for Ratliff, he got back to his office to find co-workers had tied balloons to his mailbox.