Beach hero jumps into the water after spotting 3 girls in danger of drowning
UC Davis Water Polo Player Rescues Three Girls From Drowning at Seattle's Seafair Festival
SEATTLE — A Division I water polo player from California is being credited with saving three young swimmers from drowning in Lake Washington during Seattle's annual Seafair festival.
Lillie Vehling, a student-athlete at the University of California, Davis, was attending Seafair on July 31 and had gone to Genesee Park to watch the U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron when she noticed the girls struggling in the water nearby.
"They did not look very good," Vehling told FOX 13 Seattle. "They were already bobbing up and down, trying to get breaths, and one of the girls was actually drowning the others in order to breathe. That's when I knew I had to jump in."
According to Vehling, she targeted the girl who was pushing the others under first, recognizing that removing her would improve the odds for the remaining swimmers. She then went back for the second girl before reaching the third, who had become tangled in a buoy rope.
"Unfortunately, by the time I had gotten to the third girl, it was just the top of her head that was there," Vehling said. "I just saw her black hair in the water barely floating and when I got to her, she was unconscious. I lifted her head up out of the water and had my arm underneath her armpit holding her up."
The third girl coughed up water and regained consciousness, according to the local report.
Vehling, a California native, said she was unsure exactly how she managed the rescues in the moment. "I removed them one by one," she said. "The first girl — I, again, don't really remember how I did it, but I got her back to the shallow water."
In recognition of her actions, Seafair honored Vehling at its gala, where she was knighted and named Seafair royalty. The organization also arranged for her to have a special viewing of the Blue Angels, a squadron she has long admired.
The rescue comes amid growing national attention to water safety. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 4 and the second-leading cause of unintentional injury death among children ages 5 to 14.
Recent weeks have seen other dramatic water rescues around the country. In Florida, two lifeguards were credited with saving a 5-year-old boy who had been pulled unconscious from the ocean at Silver Beach after his family flagged them down for help. In Los Angeles County, lifeguards performed nearly 2,000 ocean rescues over a single weekend amid extreme heat and dangerous surf conditions.