Showing posts with label rescue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rescue. Show all posts

Monday, April 21, 2008

You have to keep an eye on your child...


FoxNews reports that "A gust of wind blew a 2-year-old in a stroller into Lake Michigan, where the boy remained submerged for at least 15 minutes before being pulled out unconscious but alive.
The child's grandfather, who had been pushing the stroller on the lakeside Friday afternoon, jumped into the harbor to try to save the boy, the Chicago Fire Department said.
Witnesses said the frantic grandfather struggled in the frigid water, just off a 70-foot long pier, pointing a few feet away and shouting, "Child! Child!"
"He was just moaning in the breakwater, crying," said John Derscheid, who called 911.
Winds at the time were about 20 mph with gusts of about 30 mph, a meteorologist said.
The boy was in critical condition at Children's Memorial Hospital, authorities said Friday night. A hospital spokeswoman declined to comment Saturday.
The grandfather, who appeared to be in his 60s, was in fair condition Saturday afternoon at St. Joseph Hospital, where he was being treated for exposure.
The toddler was strapped in the three-wheeled jogging stroller about 10 feet below the surface of the 42-degree water before rescue divers pulled him out.
Derscheid said the scene "is going to stick with me for the rest of my life.""

Monday, March 31, 2008

Mother rescues son from a foreign land...


The NY Post reports that "It began with an e-mail on her MySpace page: "He is fine. He is healthy. I will try to get him back for you."
Queens schoolteacher Tiffany Rubin's heart leapt. After months of searching, it was the first real lead that her 7-year-old son, kidnapped by his father and taken to South Korea, could be found.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God,' " she told The Post, recalling how she felt the first time she read the e-mail.
But it would take an ex-CIA agent, a Christian charity, bottles of makeup to conceal her black skin and some cash at the airport to get him back.
The boy wept for his mother while he was held by his father - begging to come home and be reunited with her.
The relationship between Rubin and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Salko, was never storybook. The unmarried couple broke up when their son, Kobe Lee, was 4 months old. They spent the next six years in court fighting over custody.
It wasn't until Salko, who Rubin says wasn't paying child support, was in danger of losing visitation rights that he took a drastic, illegal step. Salko disappeared with the boy last August, when Kobe was on a two-week visit at his Brooklyn home.
Rubin jumped on the Web to try to locate her son.
For weeks, she joined chat groups and pleaded her case to MySpace members in Seoul, where Salko, 37, also known as Kang-Shik Lee, has family. In late November, the MySpace tipster said the boy had been located.
As promised, the tipster contacted the US Embassy. But absent some sign of abuse, the Foreign Service staff and Korean police who visited Salko in December had no authority to remove Kobe.
Rubin, 30, decided to take matters into her own hands. She couldn't afford the five-figure cost of a bounty hunter, so she turned to Michael Miller and his American Association for Lost Children..."