The casket wasn't much larger than a suitcase. The call to 911 illustrates how quickly a child left in a car can turn tragic. Dispatcher: 911, what's your emergency?

Father: I have a small infant. He was locked in a car. I forgot about him for, ah, two hours. His lips are purple. I'm at 755 W. Smith Road. I'm getting him out of the car. I need help. I need help.

Dispatcher: Well, is he breathing?

Father: I don't know yet. I got somebody else checking on him. I gotta put you down. I'll be right back.

Dispatcher: Okay. Oh, my God.

Co-worker: Hello?

Dispatcher: Yes?

Co-worker: Hello. Yeah, I just did CPR on him, some water, but he still isn't breathing.

Dispatcher: He's not breathing?

Co-worker: No.

Dispatcher: Do you know CPR?

Co-worker: Yeah.

Dispatcher: Okay, continue CPR.

Co-worker: Keep doing it?

Dispatcher: Yeah, definitely. How old is he?

Co-worker: I don't know. Hold on one second, all right?

Dispatcher: Okay.

Father: Okay, okay, I'm on the phone.

Dispatcher: Okay. All right, he's not breathing yet?

Father: I don't know.

Dispatcher: Okay, are you inside?

Father: We're inside now, yes.

Dispatcher: Okay, you have him inside with you?

Father: We have him inside.

Dispatcher: Is he, is he giving him breaths?

Father: Yes.

Dispatcher: Okay, how old is the baby?

Father: He's nine months.

Dispatcher: Nine months old.

Dispatcher: Nine months old. God, he's not breathing. Okay, all right, try to stay calm. We have officers en route. We have a squad en route.

Father: Oh, my God. This is all my fault. Oh, my God.

Dispatcher: Okay. Okay.

Father: Oh, my God.

Dispatcher: Does he have a pulse?

Father: Don't blow too hard, don't blow too hard. Holy (expletive).

Father: I'm on the phone with them. I'm on the phone with them.

Dispatcher: Okay, is he giving him just little breaths through his nose and mouth?

Father: Is he breathing?

Father: He's spitting up.

Dispatcher: Okay, does he have a pulse? Have them check for a pulse.

Father: Does he have a pulse?

Father: Does he have a pulse anywhere, can you tell? Is the heart beating?

Father: Put your head on his chest, put your head on his chest. Get a heartbeat? Get a heartbeat? Get a heartbeat? He's nine months. He's nine months.

Nine-month-old Tyler Costello was pronounced dead at the hospital. Two years have passed since that day, but some days his mother, Melody, says she still sees him when she looks at her youngest daughter. She sees his bright red hair and pale blue eyes.

Melody and Tyler's father, Todd, still have difficulty accepting that Tyler died the way he did. They were caring, loving parents, and until it happened to them could not have imagined forgetting their child in a car.

Melody had heard stories of children dying in hot cars and sneered at what she considered the stupidity of some parents. Like many, she assumed this kind of thing only happened to careless, irresponsible people. That morning she learned what nearly 60 other American parents learn every year: it can happen to anyone.

Warming Danger

Experts are becoming more concerned by the steady increase of in-car, heat-related deaths across the nation. Each year, the lives of nearly an entire classroom of healthy, loved children are lost. "If a professor at UCLA can forget a child, anyone can," says Janette Fennell, founder and president of www.kidsincars.org.

Fennell calculates that at least 113 American children died in and around parked cars in 2004. Heat exposure in cars accounts for about one-third of those tragedies, "between 30 and 40 unnecessary deaths a year."

Last year, three Arizona children died in cars from heat exposure, and in 2003 four deaths were recorded. In Scottsdale alone, Rural/Metro rushed to 111 calls for children left or locked in cars last year, and the Chandler Fire Department has already made 45 such emergency calls since January.

"That only bad parents leave children in cars is a huge misconception," Fennell adds. "Our database shows drugs and alcohol involved in only two percent of these cases. This is happening to intelligent, educated, loving parents."

Fennell says she knows several professionals who have forgotten children. Doctors, lawyers, engineers and CEO's have all had fatal memory lapses.

Todd and Melody Costello fit that profile: educated, loving and busy. Todd was not the type to forget things. His memory is part of what made him a successful printing account executive for multi-million dollar companies.

All weekend Todd had been preparing an important presentation. He normally dropped their four-year-old daughter off at kindergarten. Melody normally took Tyler. She says she would sing to Tyler when they drove together. She would reach to the backseat and tickle his feet.

At home, Todd and Tyler used to crawl and play together on the living room floor, dad and son. Buddies. "We had a change of routine," Melody says of that July 29 morning, "a change of who took the kids."

A family wedding in town convinced the Costello's to shuffle their normal schedule. At the last minute they decided Todd should drop Tyler off at the babysitter. Melody would take their daughter. "He was used to having a talkative four-year-old in the car or no child at all," Melody says. "Tyler was an especially quiet baby."

Todd drove his usual route to work. He drove past the turn to the babysitter's house and straight to the parking lot at the office. He grabbed his briefcase off the passenger seat and locked his Dodge Neon as usual. The frantic call to 911 came a couple of hours later.

Deadly Minutes

About every two weeks Janette Fennell hears of another child who died while locked in a car. Other days Fennell records other heart-breaking, unnecessary deaths: a child playing with a lighter in a car or trapped in a power window. The number of in-car, heat-related deaths increases during the summer. "We want parents to see that a child left alone in a car is just as dangerous as being left alone in the bathtub or by the pool," Fennell says.

Due to airbags, most children must now ride in the backseat. Fennell says a dangerous byproduct is that more parents are forgetting their children. "The number of heat-related deaths has increased yearly. It's an unintended consequence," Fennell says.

Valley experts say airbags aren't the only cause for increasing child-in-car fatalities. "The greater majority of homes now have two parents working. They're sharing the childcare duties," says Battalion Chief Dan Couch of the Chandler Fire Department. "We just forgot who picked up the kid," he says of busy parents. "We're too hurried. We're too fast."

Memory Lapse

Greg Crawford and his wife Kim had never been too hurried or too fast for their daughter Jordan. She was the pride of their life. May 2 would have been Jordan Crawford's first birthday. She died in a Tempe parking lot last fall.

Both Greg and his wife work upper-level jobs in the publishing industry. "There were some who asked, 'How could you forget your most precious thing in your life?' My wife and I don't have an answer to that. We don't know," Crawford says. "But once people start thinking [that it could never happen to them], that's when it could happen to them."

Greg Crawford says he and his wife had seen TV specials about parents leaving children in cars and had even talked about it. "It was something that I think we were aware of, but at the same time you go about your daily life…with the focus that something like that isn't going to happen."

Busy schedules and daily routines can cause a short-term memory overload. "Your short-term memory only holds so much," warns Janelle Eaton, a mother of four who experienced a near-fatal lapse firsthand. It was nearly two years ago that a circle of police officers cornered Eaton outside her dentist's office.

Hot Facts When it is 93 degrees outside, the temperature inside a parked car can reach 125 degrees in 20 minutes. With an outside temperature of 83 degrees and your window down two inches, the temperature inside your car can reach 109 degrees in just 15 minutes. If the outside temperature is only 79 degrees, the inside car temperature can soar to extreme levels. A black interior can reach 192 degrees on a 79-degree day. A child's body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult's. Heatstroke can quickly lead to permanent disability or death. Without emergency medical treatment, the child will go into shock and vital organs will start to fail. Source: The National SAFE KIDS Campaign

"How could you forget your baby," one of the officers yelled as the paramedics rushed five-month-old Bethany to an ambulance. Another officer joined the rant. Eaton stood shaking and crying as paramedics rushed her daughter to the hospital. Bethany had been in the car for less than an hour, but what was a pleasant 65-degree day outside had already reached nearly 110 degrees inside the car.

Doctors are not sure why Bethany lived, but Eaton considers her survival a miracle. Today Bethany is leading the normal life of a two-year-old. "I know of other children who were left for much shorter and have significant damage," Eaton says.

"If you would have told me two weeks before that I was going to forget my child, I never would have believed you," she adds.

She now teaches new parents about the susceptibility of relying on short-term memory. That's a lesson Greg Crawford wishes was included in all parenting classes. "My wife and I went through a ton of childcare classes and classes through the hospital. This is the last thing that you talk about," Crawford says.

Reality, Eaton says, is that everyone's brain lapses from time to time. But forgetting just once can be lethal. Eaton says habits like always checking the backseat can save lives. "Leave your purse in the backseat," she says. "Leave other things you need in the backseat whenever you go anywhere."

Dead Heat

It was 90 degrees outside the day Tyler Costello died. With the searing hot summers in the Valley, experts say temperatures in parked cars can reach 140 degrees in a matter of minutes. Experts say one second is too long to leave a child in a car.

Because children's bodies absorb heat about three times as fast as adults, even a few short minutes can cause serious injury. "You just can't leave the baby in the car at all," Melody says.

Melody adds that parents should communicate exactly when they pick up or drop off children. "Todd and I weren't in the habit of communicating about the drop offs," she says. "Call and ask how the baby was when you dropped him off at daycare. Have your daycare call if the baby doesn't show up."

Moving On

"When it happens to you, you can hear all the comforting things, but the guilt of knowing you did that won't ever go away," Melody says. For months the Costello's local newspaper editorial page was filled with choice words for the already-grieving family.

Safety Tips Put something you'll need like your cell phone, handbag, lunch or briefcase on the floor in the back seat. Get in the habit of always opening the back door of your vehicle every time you reach your destination. Ask your child's day care center or babysitter to phone you if your child doesn't show up when expected. Many children's lives could have been saved by a telephone call. Give childcare providers all phone numbers, including those of family members or friends. If you see a child alone in a vehicle, call 911 immediately. Keep a large teddy bear in the child's car seat when it's not occupied. When the child is placed in the seat, put the teddy bear in the front passenger seat. For additional child safety information visit the Kids And Cars Web site at www.kidsandcars.org.

"We had people write letters to the newspaper saying Todd should go to jail for what happened," she says.

Due to the internal guilt and the external stigma, many families are never able to fully cope with these tragedies. "That's one reason I want to get out and talk about it," Eaton says. "So many parents think that only bad parents could do this. A big part of me wants all this to die down, but if we heard on the news that somebody forgot their child and the child died, would you be able to live with yourself?"

Prevention

Eaton often finds herself crying at her computer, reading yet another story of a child who died in a car. If she can prevent one family from suffering this tragedy, she says it will be worth every minute.

That sentiment is shared by the Costellos. "We don't want to be calling you to help you out," Melody says. "Most of the families this happens to stay in seclusion. Maybe if they had talked about it, it wouldn't have happened to us," she adds.

This July will mark the three-year anniversary of Tyler's death. Unlike many families having suffered a similar tragedy, the Costellos have managed to maintain a strong marriage. "We took vows," Melody says of her commitment to husband Todd. "Those vows said for better or for worse. If you really take your vows seriously, you won't give up that quickly."

Now she and Todd share their time with their two girls, one who was Tyler's older sister and the other who would have been Tyler's little sister. "I think God really gave us a gift when he gave her to us," Melody says of her youngest.

It took some time, but Todd now drives the Costello's two children again. He still double-checks the backseat everywhere he goes, even when he knows he drove somewhere alone. He always opens the back door.