’ . . . all I could think of was getting the child back.’ : Hero Kept Swinging Until Lion Ran Off

Gregory Ysais was still sleepless early Monday morning with the vision of the mountain lion vivid in his memory.

“You know, I can still picture the sight, and it’s not a pretty one--a cat with the child in his mouth, really bloody,” he said in quiet, measured tones.

What did he think when he saw the gruesome sight?

There was no real thinking, he said. “It was all action. There wasn’t time for anything else.”

Authorities say Ysais’ heroics undoubtedly saved the life of 5-year-old Laura Michele Small of El Toro, who Sunday was carried off by a mountain lion while on a hike with her family in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park east of San Juan Capistrano.

Single-handedly, Ysais (pronounced ee-SIGH-iss) forced the lion to drop its prey, then chased it away. Laura is in Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo listed in serious condition, and what authorities believe is the same lion was shot dead Monday by trackers.

Ysais, 36, an electronics technician from Mission Viejo, had taken his wife, Andrea, and his daughter, Jessica, 11, to Caspers Park for a hike Sunday. As they emerged from a nature trail, “I heard cries for help, what I thought were cries for help,” he said.

His wife and daughter thought they were the sounds of children playing, but he concentrated and heard them again--distant cries of a woman.

“I told my wife, ‘I’ve got to go.’ I gave her my binoculars and started running,” he said.

He ran 50 yards, then another cry gave him the proper direction, and he sprinted across a stream and up a trail to find Laura’s mother, Susan, alone in a clearing.

“She was screaming that a mountain lion had dragged her baby off,” Ysais said. “She said, ‘It went in there.’

“I ran off the trail and into the thick brush and through some cactus until I ran right into where I found the cat.

“It had the child in its mouth. I saw the cat sitting under the thick brush with this child. He had it by the back of the neck and was trying to keep a good grip on it. The child was squirming. I could see the head was cut pretty bad. She was quite bloody.

“I was, I don’t know, I got--I don’t know, all I could think of was getting the child back. I grabbed a branch--trees or shrubs that were close by--I grabbed a big branch and broke it right off. I moved closer to the cat, swinging it over his head, trying not to hit the child, trying to, you know, knock its head, distract it.

“I was swinging as low as I could, trying to put this stick right in his eyes. I just didn’t give up, you know. He was sweeping at me, but the branch was long enough that I could keep just far enough away. . . . He was for real. Those were real claws.”

The cat kept the child in his jaws, propping himself up on one foreleg and using the other to try fending off the branch, Ysais said. The branch hit home once or twice.

“Eventually it got to the point that he dropped the child, and I moved in and kept swinging at him until I could get between the cat and the child. I just kept on until he ran into the thicket.”

The child lay limp on the ground, he said. “I yelled to the mother: ‘Pick up your child! Let’s get out of here!’ ” and they fled to a clearing.

The confrontation did not take long, but just how long Ysais can’t say. “It seemed to happen in a couple minutes, maybe. I don’t know. It could have been seconds.”

The sight of the cat seemed to push all else from his consciousness, he said. “I was pretty aware of what I was doing, but I was doing it as fast as I could. It just happened so fast. I couldn’t stand around and think it out,” he said.

Ysais said he had been in the Army during the early 1970s and, as other soldiers did, wondered how he’d behave in action. “How can one know? You’ll never know until it happens,” he said.

But Ysais never saw action and never had faced a life-and-death situation--before Sunday.

“My adrenaline was going. By the time I’d got there, I’d run so far I’m sure I was pretty well pumped up for the situation. Otherwise, I just . . . ,” but he never finished the sentence.

“It’s probably better left to professionals. But there was no one else there,” Ysais said. “I didn’t give it much thought. I just heard people crying for help, and I just ran as fast as I could.”

Was he being brave?

“No, I was just doing what I had to do. I couldn’t think of anything else. It was just, I don’t know, I just did what I could,” he said.

“Even now I wonder, was I doing the right thing? Did I get there early enough? . . . It’s really up to the doctors. I didn’t save the child’s life, I gave them a chance to. It’s really up to the doctors to do what they can do,” he said.

Ysais said he thinks it may take several days for him to recover from the excitement and anxiety. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”

He said attention should be focused on the injured youngster’s parents, not on him. “I can only imagine what the parents are going through. At least for me it’ll be over, but they’ve got to deal with it,” he said.

There wasn’t any heroism involved, Ysais said. “I just wanted the child back more than the cat did, I guess.”