by Kevin Burton
Two more stories today from the Good News Network. God bless that website for reminding us that not every news story has to end in a shootout or a lawsuit.
In the first story a pregnant mother takes action to save four children:
A pregnant mom is being hailed a hero after saving four kids from drowning.
Alyssa DeWitt, 27, decided to take her kids to First Street Beach Pier at Lake Michigan on Tuesday afternoon.
“I almost didn’t, I sat in the van for about five minutes thinking the wind was really strong, and I didn’t really know if it was a good idea,” said the stay-at-home mom from Manistee, Michigan.
On the beach she noticed a group of girls, all under 15, going into the water and became concerned for their safety.
“I happened to look up and saw one of the girls waving her arms towards me and immediately knew something was wrong,” she said. “I got up, pulled my kids out of the water and ran out onto the pier.”
She called 911 but, she says, “I didn’t know if [they] could hear me and I didn’t have time to wait and find out,” she said.
No-one else was on the beach. She was the only one who could help. Alyssa laid on her stomach, despite being five months pregnant, and began trying to pull the girls over the rocky and slippery pier.
“Every time I’d get one of them halfway up, a big wave would come smashing into us and knock them back down or almost pull me over,” she said.
“My turning point was when one of the little girls looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to die.’ That was it for me and I was like ‘I’m not going to let you die, I’m going to get you out of this water, I promise.’”
She managed to pull all three girls out of the water and over the pier before the group set off back towards the shore to rescue a fourth girl who had managed to get closer to shore but couldn’t stand because her leg was injured.
“I honestly do not know how I did it, it was pure adrenaline at that point,” DeWitt said.
“Right after I got everybody onto the beach, the ambulance and the police cars came flying into the parking lot.”
DeWitt sustained a swollen wrist but she and the baby were both fine when she went to the hospital to get checked out.
She said another hero of the day is her six-year-old daughter, who managed to keep her two-year-old brother safe during the ordeal.
“Between me screaming into the phone that I needed help and me screaming to the kids what I needed them to do to get them out, I was also turning around and screaming to my son not to come because it wasn’t safe,” she said.
“He was very scared and repeatedly tried to run to me on the pier.”
“My daughter would pick him up and take him back to the sand and she was so calm and I’m extremely proud of her, she did a great job.”
In our last story a Chinese shepherd saved marathoners endangered by a freak ice storm.
When a freak ice storm felled runners in a 100-kilometer cross-country race in China’s north-western Gansu province, a shepherd named Zhu Keming braved the elements to pull three men and three women to safety.
The day of the race began with mild temperatures. Keming was tending his flock as usual. Then in the space of a few moments, everything changed.
As temperatures plummeted and freezing sleet and hail began to pound the terrain, Keming took shelter in a small cave he’d been using for years to store emergency supplies.
It was from this vantage point that he noticed one of the runners in obvious distress. The man appeared immobilized, disoriented, and in pain.
Keming brought the man back to the cave to warm him up. After lighting a fire, he returned to the mountainside, shepherding five additional runners to the cave. There’s little doubt he saved their lives.
Unprepared for the abrupt shift in the weather, most racers were outfitted in lightweight clothing that was no match for the frigid temperatures. The threat of hypothermia was all too real. (21 of the 172 athletes in the race succumbed to the storm.)
“I want to say how grateful I am to the man who saved me,” runner Zhang Xiaotao posted on the Chinese social media site Weibo. “Without him, I would have been left out there.”
While Keming is being lauded as a hero in his homeland, the humble shepherd doesn’t see the reason for all the fuss. He says he’s “just an ordinary person who did a very ordinary thing.”
The athletes whose lives he saved, their families—and pretty much everyone else who hears the story—likely disagree. Being in the right place at the right time and having the courage to do the right thing can be extraordinary indeed.
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