A 911 dispatcher received a call to rescue a stranded kayaker in Washington this past Sunday, and in turn called the one person who's probably given her the most help over the years: her mom.
The dispatcher, Raedyn Grasseth, received the call from a 45-year-old kayaker whose vessel had sank near a jetty by the Columbia River. The woman climbed onto a pile of logs while her companion went to go make the phone call.
"Jetties are very dangerous," said Grasseth on Monday. "It sounds like her kayak just got sucked toward the jetty and went down."
Grasseth's mother, Cindy Faubian, lives nearby where the woman was stranded, and was considerably closer to the situation than the police department or any other authorities. Upon receiving the call from her daughter, Faubian immediately set out to see what she could do.
When Faubian arrived at the scene she quickly got in a kayak of her own and paddled out to reach the woman. Her husband and nephew rushed over in a skiff as well, and soon the three were pulling the stranded boater to safety.
"I said, 'Are you okay?' And she said, 'Yeah.' She was okay, she was just wet and cold," Faubian recalled.
Other than being severely frightened and wet, the unnamed kayaker was otherwise fine and did not require medical assistance. The 911 dispatcher's quick thinking turned an otherwise tragic situation into an occasion worth celebrating.
Grasseth added that the woman "hung onto the jetty until she could climb up and get on to as much of the log piling as she could and waited. She continued, "She's lucky she's alive, plain and simple.".
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