AVON – A Phillips woman was recuperating at home Monday after her body temperature dropped to 91 degrees after she fell into the ice-jammed Sandy River trying to rescue her dog, Gus.
Two women and five children were heroes in her mind since they all played a part in the rescue of both her and her dog Saturday, said Elizabeth Cooke, 57, on Monday.
“It’s such a miracle,” Cooke, a University of Maine at Farmington assistant writing professor and author, said. “Yup. It’s a miracle.”
Cooke, her 9-year-old daughter, Ting, and her daughter’s friend were out for a walk under a sunny sky Saturday morning, she said. Three boys, friends of the girls, joined them as they walked along a path that leads to the locally known Salmon Hole.
Cooke had stopped at the gate to the old railroad bed and gave the children a safety talk. “I told them, Here’s the deal, as far as we go is the end of the path. We stay away from the river,'” Cooke said.
A couple of the children ran ahead of her and were on the icy snow, she said, and the children were laughing after one of their legs went down into the snow.
“I had not realized that Gus had gone to the edge, and he stopped and then slipped in,” she said.
The swollen river was flowing rapidly, she said, and the ice blocks were piled up on the edges.
Cooke said Gus, a 7-year-old black Lab with Lyme disease, was swimming frantically.
She was lying on her stomach on an ice block as big as a couch but couldn’t get him.
She took off her boot and held onto a edge of a block to see if she could stand on the bottom. She couldn’t.
Normally it was a beach area but the water had flooded over it, she said. There was 4 feet of water beneath 3 feet of ice, she said.
She finally was able to grab the dog’s collar but the 110-pound woman couldn’t pull the 100-pound dog from the river.
“I yelled to the kids to go get help,” she said. “I asked one of the boys to stay behind in case, God forbid, I fell in.”
The children hadn’t been gone a minute when she fell into water up to her chin.
She got the dog’s head to rest on the ice but couldn’t get him completely on it. After a while, she was shivering and had no feeling in her legs in the cold water, she said.
At one point, the current carried her and she began experiencing euphoria, Cooke said.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it. But then I saw my dog again and that gave me the strength to go on and try and save him,” she said.
The children had found Nancy Weiner, 70, of Avon in their pursuit of help and told her the dog was in the water. Weiner said she discovered both Cooke and the dog in the water when she arrived.
“I was weak,” Weiner said, “because I’d just gotten out of the hospital.”
She couldn’t pull them to safety.
Along came Melissa Johnston, 31, of Phillips, the boys’ mother.
Weiner said they put the leash on the dog, and Johnston was able to pull him out.
Johnston put an arm around Cooke’s waist, Cooke said, which felt like an arm of steel and “by the grace of God, pulled me out.”
“I had bruises and abrasions from banging against the ice,” Cooke said.
Johnston was very clear-headed, Cooke said. She was able to get Cooke out of her wet jacket and turtleneck and put her own jacket on Cooke.
“She half carried me, half dragged me” one-quarter to one-third of a mile to the road, Cooke said. They met up with another mother of one of the children; the two younger women made a seat out of their arms to carry her.
Just as they got to the road, a NorthStar Emergency Services ambulance and other emergency responders arrived to take her to the hospital.
Cooke said her own daughter, Ting, had been going door to door to get help and, when one woman answered the door, Ting told her to call 911.
Cooke spent the night in the hospital in the intensive care unit and Ting was allowed to stay with her.
“We snuggled all night,” Cooke said. “She said, Momma, are you going to die?’ I said, I’m not going to die.’ I think she healed my heart that night. She just clung to me. We just held each other and talked. I think God was guiding them. I almost went. I was so close to death.”
Cooke said she learned a lesson and hopes that other parents learn it, too.
“People should not let their children near a river after a flood. It’s too dangerous,” she said.
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