Story of the Week, November 6, 2009, Pool Party
Originally published 2008 in WorldNetDaily, but I thought you’d appreciate it.
A Florida mother experienced what she is calling a miracle when her young daughter was presumed drowned in a pool, and three strangers brought the girl back to life. Meagan Durocher, who will turn two later this month, fell into a pool at Bristol Pines in Naples, Florida, Saturday evening while attending a party for her uncle, Naples Police Officer Steve Walden.
The girl was underwater for more than a minute, according to one witness. Kathlene Durocher, Meagan’s mother thanked Naples Police Officer Benjamin Vasquez, one of the people who immediately came to the child’s aid, but has been unable to identify the other two helpers.
“They were complete strangers to me,” Durocher said yesterday in an interview with the Naples Daily News. “I don’t know who it was. I want to meet them because they saved the life of my beautiful baby.”
Apparently Meagan slipped into the pool while no one was watching her. Kathlene’s sister pulled Meagan out of the pool and brought her to a table. Party-goers began performing CPR on the child, but she did not respond. “I saw it within a foot of me, that child was dead,” Walden said. “The child was purple (with) swelled eyes and swelled black lips.”
According to Vasquez, who was off-duty at the time, Meagan wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse, but he proceeded to perform chest compressions, even though he never had done it on a child before. “She was purple as a grape,” he said. “It was amazing.”
However, Vasquez was unable to move in close enough to breathe for the child. He yelled for help, and a man and women suddenly came to the rescue. The man breathed for Meagan while the woman took her pulse for about three minutes until the little girl began breathing on her own and spitting up water. “I was hysterical, and someone came up to me and said ‘Look at her, she’s up,’” Durocher said. She didn’t think to look for the strangers for another minute or so, and when she did, they had disappeared. No one at the party remembers seeing them leave.
In a related story, some years ago an atheist doctor happened to see a young girl hit by a car. After a quick examination he was ready to declare her dead at the scene. Then, for some unexplainable reason, he suddenly said, “Lord, if you exist, bring this child back to life.” The very next second the girl took a deep breath. She was not only alive, she was discharged from the hospital that evening.
Heavenly or earthly angels, does it really matter?
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As I read your story about the girl being saved from drowning, I kept remembering my own story of my neice’s falling into her grandmother’s pool when she was only 2 years old. This is how my part of the story goes: I was camping in NC that weekend. We live in SC. I woke up before daylight that Sunday morning, having had a horrible dream that my neice fell into a pool. I could see her going down slowly, hair flowing upward as she fell further. I was horrified, and knew that her mom, my sister would freeze in place and be incapable of helping her baby. I lay there in my camper asking God what could I do to help my baby neice, from so far away. In answer, I had the incredible urge to pray that someone would be there besides my sister who could save her. Over and over I asked God that dark morning to please send someone to save my neice. In my dream there was nobody there but my sister and her little girl. We were coming home that morning from our camping trip, so as my husband drove, I prayed silently, still asking that God place someone there with my neice if indeed she fell into a pool. When we got home around 10:30 that morning, my mother met me in our driveway telling me about how my neice had just fallen into her grandma’s swimming pool, and how my sister froze and could not go in after her. Incredibly, her husband had passed by the window inside their home, just as my neice fell in the pool. He darted out the door, jumped in, and rescued her. To this day, I feel that Angels were there, putting him exactly in front of that window in exactly the right second to see her fall in, and know without doubt my prayers were answered in full. God is Good, Great, and Almighty!