CALGARY — Jan 14, 2014, An Alberta woman is being credited with helping to save a two-year-old girl who fell into a septic tank in Arizona.
Chelsea Cunningham of Sundre was visiting Maricopa south of the border and was at a farmers market on Saturday when the toddler tumbled into the tank. The girl had been chasing her dog when she stepped on the receptacle's cover, which was cracked and flipped open. She fell inside and began drowning in the sewage. Two men dived in and managed to pull the girl out. Cunningham — despite having no formal medical training — used CPR to revive the girl. "I don't remember a whole lot about after that point. I just know that there are some things that I've learned that came in handy," Cunningham said. The little one was rushed to hospital where she was expected to recover.
Cunningham, a 28-year-old mother of three, said she grew up with CPR because her father insisted on it. "It was an influence that I had growing up. There was always a first-aid presence there. My dad was very insistent that it was kept up." Jim Cowie, Cunningham's father, was also at the farmers market. He said things were so frantic it took him a minute to realize his daughter was the one controlling the rescue. "That was the intensity of the situation. This child did not look like she was going to make it," he said. Henry Ricketts is one of the men who jumped into the nearly two-metre-deep tank head first. "I heard some lady yell, 'My baby, my baby,"' he said. "I just got in right away."
He and the other man began swimming around in the raw sewage trying to find the girl. One of them finally felt her hair, about four minutes after she fell in, and the two men managed to pull her out and hand her to Cunningham.
"The girl kept spewing it out and then Cunningham3/8 did the mouth-to-mouth," recalled witness Barbara Fowler. "Honestly, I didn't think she would make it."Finally, the toddler started breathing and began to cry. Witnesses say it's a miracle that Cunningham was in the right place at the right time, but she said she's just happy the little girl came through. "She wasn't done. She had a lot left in her, I guess." The trio were being honoured Tuesday with a life-saving award.
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