Bold Rescue : Woman Climbs Into Deep Quarry to Save Child

Gwendolyn Tyiska says she’s no hero.

Sure, she climbed over a razor-wire fence and lowered herself into a 100-foot-deep pit to rescue a child who had fallen inside. And sure, Tyiska managed to lift the child to safety--even as the pit’s sandy walls crumbled, plunging the rescuer toward what she feared was a quicksand bottom.

“I’m just a mother who did what any other mother would do if she heard a kid hollering for help,” the 32-year-old Compton woman said Wednesday after saving a 10-year-old neighbor girl who tumbled into the quarry behind a Central Avenue brickyard.

The drama began at the Atkinson Brick Co. when Tyiska heard 8-year-old David Severan calling for someone to help his sister, Carolyn, 10.

The two children had crawled under a fence that encircles the 51-year-old quarry to look at earthmoving equipment used to excavate material for making bricks. They were standing at the edge of the huge hole when its earthen side gave way beneath Carolyn’s weight.

The girl tumbled about 10 feet down the steep embankment before she was able to grab rocks that were sticking out. Her brother called Tyiska when he saw her walking down a nearby street with her two sons.

After Tyiska lifted Carolyn to safety, the sandy wall gave way again and she tumbled another 50 feet into the pit. She was able to stop her plunge by grabbing a stump and was rescued about 20 minutes later by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.

Both Tyiska and Carolyn escaped injury.

“She saved me,” said Carolyn, a serious-faced fifth-grader.

“She’s a hero,” said Carolyn’s mother, Barbara Severan.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials agreed.

“Picture a deep rock quarry, a very steep quarry, and (Tyiska) was 50 feet from the bottom,” said Deputy David McCabe, who with Deputy Roberto Causey helped pull her from the pit.

Mae Thompson, a Compton crime committee member, said she plans to ask the City Council to honor Tyiska for her quick thinking. “I’m not surprised she did what she did. She’s got the guts. She’s that kind of person. Gwen is not afraid of anything,” said Thompson, who has been Tyiska’s friend for years.

Barbara Severan, who gave both her children a spanking and restricted their TV watching for the next month, said she does not blame the brick company for the mishap.

“They have a fence. It’s a business. I don’t blame them at all. I blame my kids. They know better,” she said.

Officials of the brick company refused to discuss the incident, except to say that the loose fence the two children crawled under was repaired early Wednesday and that despite the impression of neighbors, there is no quicksand at the water-filled bottom of the pit.

Tyiska said a neighborhood legend holds that the quarry is lined with quicksand and that this was all she could think about as she heard little Carolyn weakly calling for help.

“When the stump I was holding on to started breaking, I dug my fingernails into the wall and got out my pocketknife and stuck that in to hold on to too. I kept thinking about the quicksand,” Tyiska said.

“I’m no hero. I just did what I’d want somebody to do if it was one of my boys stuck down there.”