Near-Fatal Drowning Incident : A Happy Thankgiving That Almost Wasn’t

There will be nothing outwardly remarkable about Thanksgiving this year for Cindy and Ron Dunlop and their 19-month-old daughter, Kyla.

But many people think it’s a miracle the family is even together. Just seven weeks ago Cindy Dunlop, who is paralyzed and in a wheelchair, saved her daughter from drowning in the backyard pool.

“This year at Thanksgiving we’ll be glad that Kyla’s with us,” she said. “I think in terms of the fact that I could have lost her. She was almost gone when I got to her. But we were both fine. She’s special to us because I wasn’t supposed to have a baby and she came out so pretty and stuff. She was already special.”

Kyla’s rescue brought reporters to their desert ranch in this remote San Bernardino County desert community, about 45 miles northeast of Los Angeles; camera crews asked her to re-enact the incident and reported it in an awed tone. But the Dunlops still can’t figure out what all the fuss is about.

“We thought, ‘What the heck is going on?’ Cindy’s husband, Ron, said when the couple became bombarded by interview requests two days after the event. “What’s the big deal? Granted, it was something very special that she did, but it wasn’t to us that big a deal.”

“We had to take ourselves out of the situation,” Cindy said, “and look at it from the perspective of somebody who doesn’t live with someone handicapped to see that it is something spectacular.”

The 29-year-old woman has been in a wheelchair for 12 years, the result of a car crash that sent her Jeep over a cliff and left her with multiple internal injuries.

Despite that, she swims, rides horses and runs a household.

Cindy recounts the near-fatal drowning incident matter-of-factly, the result of having told it so many times to so many people. On Tuesday, Oct. 7, Cindy Dunlop was in the garage talking on the phone and heard a splash in the pool; she didn’t think much of it at the time since Cruiser, the family springer spaniel, routinely went for swims.

But she decided to check anyway. Making her way to the pool she saw Kyla floating face-down, with Cruiser pawing at her.

“I was so calm,” she said. “I wanted to panic, but I knew I had to stay calm until my daughter was safe. I never doubted that I could do something like that. When I saw her floating I didn’t think, ‘Oh no, I can’t get to her.’ I just knew I could and had to.”

Cindy swims regularly but always gets in and out the pool with assistance. With no real plan in mind for going in this time, she headed for the pool and plunged in, chair and all. She swam over to Kyla, pulled her out of the pool and performed mouth-to-mouth resucitation. “I’d never taken CPR before,” she said. “I just pinched her nose and blew into her mouth.” Kyla started breathing.

“I got her out, then I got out. But for some reason I got out on the wrong side of the pool, on the corner where I always get out. I must have subconsciously gone to that corner. I looked around and saw she was on the other side of the pool. So I had to crawl to her.”

Then Cindy crawled into the house and called 911 for an emergency ambulance. But after she gave her address, Cindy said, the line went dead. “I kept saying, ‘Hello, is anybody there?’ But it was just dead. I thought they were supposed to stay on the line. So then I called Ron, and he called a neighbor who came up, got Kyla and me dressed, and then she called 911 again. They said they were waiting for us to call back because they were lost. It was 30 to 45 minutes before they got here.”

The Dunlops blame the delay partly on the fact that their neighborhood streets are not marked properly, and had been renamed by the county not long ago.

“You don’t think about this at the time, but later you think, what if I couldn’t have gotten her breathing? She would have been dead 45 minutes before the ambulance got here.”

Cindy was treated at the local hospital for cuts on her feet and arms; Kyla was up and around soon after as if nothing had happened. The baby sustained no injuries from the accident, and the only change Cindy has noticed is that Kyla sometimes becomes anxious about having water in her face when she bathes. Otherwise the little girl, affectionately nicknamed Stinky by her father, is a bundle of energy.

Life with the Dunlops, meanwhile, is returning to normal. Interviewers have come and gone, leaving them with videotape segments of Cindy’s appearances on TV shows and some newspaper clippings they’re saving for Kyla.

A Mailgram From Sinatara

After the interviews came letters (one addressed to “Cindy Dunlop, the girl who saved her daughter from drowning,”) expressing admiration for her courage and strength. “We were thrilled that it was even in the local newspaper,” Cindy said, “and when all this started to snowball we couldn’t believe it. I haven’t been overwhelmed with the publicity. But I got a Mailgram from Frank Sinatra who said I was a brave person. That impressed me. I don’t think you can get a swelled head out here. Out here you start thinking you’re real great and you look out and there’s nobody around to tell you that.”

“We haven’t changed anything we do,” Ron said. “It’s all pretty much the same. Just all the publicity and stuff. And we got a fence up in front of the pool.”

“And I’m taking a CPR class,” Cindy added.

They sit side-by-side on the couch in their cozy ranch home. Ron, 32, is a burly man with a mustache, a shock of dark blond hair and a hearty laugh. Cindy is slight but not frail, with dark brown hair and a healthy face full of freckles. As they sit talking they hold hands and glance sweetly at each other.

“I have yet to find anything Cindy can’t do if she puts her mind to it,” Ron said. “She may use her handicap to her advantage sometimes . . . .”

A Sly Smile

“Oh, when there’s a stack of dishes I’ll say, ‘I can’t do them, I’m too handicapped,’ ” Cindy explains with a sly smile on her face. “It doesn’t always work.”

“But if she wants to do something she’ll do it,” Ron continued. “I had no reservations before and I still have none about her taking care of our child at home. She’s a great mother and she does a great job.”

The two met several years ago at a party. “Ron was just getting over his divorce,” Cindy said, “and it wasn’t love at first sight. We were friends for two years before we got involved. Ron never sees the chair. That’s what attracted me to him, besides being a nice person and always treating me right. We’d go places and it was just like he was with a normal person. He was never afraid to take me out in public.”

Their first meeting was less than ideal. Said Cindy, “We were playing backgammon and he was being Mr. Smart and doing everything right, but I beat him real bad. So I said, ‘How does it feel to be beat by a cripple?’ Of course, he didn’t know how to answer that. The next day he demanded a rematch, and he won, and I said, ‘Does it make you feel like a man to beat someone who’s handicapped?’ ”

She has a reason for these tactics: “Most people an hour after they meet me forget I’m handicapped. I know I’m in the chair and stuff, but when I’m around people I forget until there’s someone who’s uncomfortable around me. So sometimes I like to make them squirm just to know that you don’t have to tiptoe around me.”

Own Hectic Pace

They describe their life in the desert, a good half hour’s drive beyond Palmdale, as having its own kind of hectic pace. Neither one can tolerate life in the city, although Ron grew up in the San Fernando Valley and still commutes every day to his automotive machine shop in Chatsworth, which is an hour and a half drive each way. Cindy grew up in Lake Arrowhead and moved to the desert years ago, before she met Ron. When they married 2 1/2 years ago they decided to settle here.

At night there are a lot more lights on the horizon than there used to be, evidence of encroaching civilization, but the Dunlops still cherish their secluded ranch life. There are two horses and a pony, chickens, pigs and a steer. (Sadly, their dog Cruiser was killed by a car a week after the rescue).

Weekends are spent making improvements on the house, seeing friends and going camping. “This place keeps you hopping,” Ron said. “There are the animals, and then something is always breaking down.”

Today, the Dunlops will be joining with relatives for a traditional Thanksgiving celebration.

Life hasn’t changed, and the Dunlops don’t want it or expect it to. Still, the accident has left them with a quiet pride and satisfaction in knowing that tragedy was averted and a normal family life was kept normal. “I don’t know if I learned anything from this,” Cindy said, “except that I always thought I could do something like that, but I had never been put in the situation. Now I know I can. I just hope that if I can help one other person in a wheelchair know that they can do something and not let people tell them they can’t, then it’s worth it for me to do an interview. A lot of times the doctor would say to me I couldn’t ride an ATC (all-terrain cycle) or a horse, that I’d hurt my back. But I do it anyway. He told me not to have a baby. You just have to have the will to do it, and believe that it’s going to come out all right. You have to believe in yourself.”