Jared Vigil’s bad day may have saved Connie Ostwald’s life.
The Louisville Middle School eighth-grader left school early on Wednesday because he was feeling sick. On the way home, he found Ostwald up to her neck in an icy lake screaming for help.
“I was just, like, walking home, and I could hear her screaming, but I couldn’t see her at first,” Vigil, 14, said Thursday. “At first, it didn’t sound like a person, it was almost like a squeal.”
He realized it was a person when he saw Ostwald’s arms flailing.
Vigil called 911 on his cellphone as he approached the pond, then stepped out on the ice.
Ostwald told him that if he came closer he might end up in the drink with her. Vigil, who is more accustomed to shooting hoops than throwing a life line, took off his backpack and adjusted the straps.
“I made it loose and saggy so she would have more reach,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have drowned, but if I had been in that water much longer, I definitely would have died of hypothermia,” said Ostwald, 48.
As Ostwald recalled the incident for reporters Thursday, the slightly overweight Labrador who caused all the trouble sniffed at the media gathered in her comfortable Louisville home.
Ostwald was walking Willow, 7, on Wednesday in Cottonwood Park when the dog pulled his leash from her hand and charged after some ducks on the iced-over pond.
Willow broke through the ice close to shore.
Ostwald, who hadn’t brought her cellphone, realized that if she went home to call for help, the dog would be dead when she returned. She followed Willow onto the ice and fell through.
The water was about 5 feet deep, so she could stand on the bottom. She was able to hoist Willow back up onto the ice, and she held onto her collar, hoping the dog would back up and pull her out.
Willow didn’t budge.
“She was too freaked out. She just wouldn’t back up.”
Vigil, an open-faced kid who stands 5 feet 11 inches, is in the same class as one of Ostwald’s daughters and knows the woman and her family.
Being able to help made him feel good, he said.
“I knew I could help her, and I had known her for a while. It was good that she was OK.”
Joel Smith, a ranger with the Colorado State Parks Department, listened to a reporter’s description of the rescue. The boy did everything right, he said.
He warns people never to chase their dogs onto the ice.
“If the dog falls through, then it is definitely not going to hold you, so the best thing to do is call 911 so they are out there rescuing the dog and not a human.”
“Character gets tested every day,” Ginny Vidulich, the school’s assistant principal, said in a statement. “In a crisis situation like this, for Jared to respond so perfectly is a testament to his character and courage.”
Vigil will be honored at a school assembly at the end of the school day today. He also will be honored by the Boulder Valley Board of Education on Tuesday night, when he will be named to the Superintendent’s Honor Roll.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
