AVON – Three women – with a newly formed bond of friendship – walked arm-and-arm down a snow-covered, icy trail Friday toward the spot where Elizabeth Cooke had nearly drowned the weekend before.
It was the same trail where Melissa Thompson pushed Cooke up and then carried her to safety after pulling the 57-year-old woman from the Sandy River a week ago Saturday.
“Every time I see Melissa for the rest of my life, I’m going to hug her,” Cooke said. “She’s the angel on my shoulder. She’s not going anywhere.”
Cooke, who spent a night in the hospital after her ordeal, remembers falling into the frigid river to save her dog, but is fuzzy on the details of her rescue.
Rescuers Thompson and 70-year-old Nancy Weiner stood with Cooke by the frozen river Friday and talked about their shared experience.
Thompson, who is 31, ended up near the river only by chance Saturday after she discovered her two young sons, Jacob and Jarrod, and her fiance’s son, Nicholas Hathaway, not playing where they were supposed to be. She saw one bicycle and no children.
The boys, without telling her, had joined Cooke, her daughter Ting and Ting’s friend, Chelsea Roderick, on a walk that sunny afternoon.
Thompson said she was displeased with the children for not telling her where they were going and gave them a safety lecture when she met up with them. They didn’t appear upset when they told Thompson Cooke’s dog, Gus, was in the water, so she wasn’t concerned. She still wasn’t concerned when Nicholas came and told her Cooke was in the water, too. She thought Cooke and the dog were playing near the river.
Then, after discovering one of the boy’s bikes was still down by the river, Thompson walked with them to retrieve it.
As they neared the water, Thompson saw the dog’s head resting on ice and the 110-pound Cooke, in water up to her chin, holding up the 100-pound Labrador. Cooke had fallen into the river trying to reach her dog, who had slipped into the river from huge ice chunks stacked along the water’s edge.
“Elizabeth was yelling, Help me, help me,'” Thompson said. “I knew that I had to get her out or hypothermia was going to set in, and she would die.”
Weiner, who had been out for a walk with her own dog, Shane, was standing by the river when Thompson got there. Weiner, who is recovering from back surgery, had been able to leash Gus but did not have the strength to pull Cooke or the dog out. She stayed to offer Cooke words of moral support. “I couldn’t leave her,” Weiner said.
Thompson didn’t hesitate.
She climbed over ice blocks to get to Cooke, reached over and pulled Gus out by his collar. Ting had gone to call for an ambulance, and Thompson sent the other children away with the wet dog before turning back to Cooke.
“I grabbed Elizabeth’s right hand, which was sticking out of the water, and pulled her out,” she said.
“You were strong,” Weiner said. “I couldn’t believe she came right out.”
Cooke had been in the water about 25 minutes.
Once Thompson pulled Cooke to safe footing, she peeled off Cooke’s coat and sweater and put her own coat on the shaking woman. Weiner offered Cooke a hat to warm her hands and Chelsea’s mother, who came along during the rescue, offered her own coat.
The women coaxed Cooke along the path to the road where they hoped help was coming and, when Cooke couldn’t walk any further, the 5-foot, 7-inch Thompson – who weighs about 140 pounds and has worked construction – picked Cooke up in her arms and carried her the remaining 50 feet to the approaching ambulance.
Cooke, whose core body temperature had dropped to 91 degrees, remembers thinking she was going to die but held on when Gus, who suffers from Lyme disease, whined to her.
Cooke considers Thompson, Weiner and her daughter heroes; Thompson for pulling her out, Weiner for offering spiritual support, and Ting for telling a neighbor to call 911.
When Cooke had been floundering in the water, the swollen river had raged around her. On Friday, as the women hugged each other near the rescue site, the river was frozen over and covered with snow, except for the spot where Cooke and Gus had fallen in.
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