Training Kicks In To Save Girl

Date: 06/27/2004

Edition:
Section:
Page:
Story type:

Photo Caption:

Photo Credit:


Training Kicks In To Save Girl
by Mary Nevans-Pederson



Jennifer Griner just wanted to feel what it was like to go down the water slide. She didn't know it went into deep water and she didn't know how to swim. The small 8-year-old could have drowned that day but for the quick action of two teenage lifeguards. Jennifer and her family were at a YMCA camp for an afternoon of fun sponsored by her mother's employer. While her mother got her younger brother ready for swimming, Jennifer excitedly got in line for the water slide. She slid down, splashed into the water and went straight to the bottom of the pool. "I was trying to get on top of the water. I thought I was going to die," Jennifer said. Jill Singsank and Shelby Schiffer were working as lifeguards. The young women, native Dubuquers and friends since childhood, kept scanning the pool for signs of trouble. Since Jennifer sank so fast, she did not struggle on the surface where someone might have seen her. Schiffer, 20, recalls a little girl pointing to a shadow on the pool bottom. She could see there was a little body and yelled for everyone to get out of the pool. At about the same time, Singsank, 20, dove in from her lifeguard chair, swam to the bottom and scooped up Jennifer's limp body. The women pulled Jennifer out of the water, laid her on the cement and started giving her CPR. Though she was not conscious at the time, Jennifer now realizes what they were trying to do. "The lifeguards were trying to get me alive," she said. Linda Smith, of Dubuque, Jennifer's mother, recalled the dramatic scene that day. "Jennifer was lifeless. Her face and lips were blue. I thought maybe she was already dead. I lost it," said Smith, who remembers that the lifesaving efforts seemed to go on forever. Both lifeguards kept calm and tried to keep the crowd calm as well, while they worked on Jennifer. "It was all a blur. It happened so fast. My lifesaving skills just kicked in," Singsank said. "Then she sort of whimpered and I knew she was alive." Jennifer started crying and asking for her mother, while holding tightly to her rescuers' hands. Paramedics arrived and rushed her to The Finley Hospital in Dubuque where she was checked out and released. Singsank and Schiffer were themselves traumatized by the incident and were emotionally fragile for days. "It was such a shock having two such opposite emotions in a few seconds - deep dread that someone's life is in your hands and overwhelming elation," said Singsank, who is majoring in biology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. Schiffer treasures a letter she received from Jennifer. "She thanked me and said, 'I hope you are saving other people's lives.'" Schiffer is majoring in special education at the University of Iowa. Both women are grateful for their Red Cross training. "You work and train, but it's never as real as it is when something happens. There are no words to describe how important that training is," Schiffer said. Gayle Casel, health and safety services director for the American Red Cross of the Tri-States, said without their training, the two "might not have had the skills to save the little girl or even to recognize there was an emergency." The agency offers numerous training opportunities and 45 percent of its budget comes from the United Way. As for Jennifer, far from being afraid of the water after her scary experience, she recently took swimming lessons and wants to be a lifeguard someday. Copyright: Copyright 2004 Telegraph Herald