A Daring Rescue : Teen-Ager Leaps Into Raging Waters and Pulls Woman to Safety

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

High school senior Mark White, 17, was checking the depth of a swollen wash in Santa Clarita on Monday when he heard an anguished cry for help.

Being swept toward him was a tiny, white-haired woman named Sally Swanson.

A few minutes earlier she had been trapped in her van by raging water near Sand Canyon Road. Upon trying to swim to safety, she was carried away by the water. It was icy cold and moving so fast that it pulled her cowboy boots off.

Wearing two pairs of jeans, two shirts, a sweat shirt and a denim jacket, White leaped into Sand Canyon Wash and grabbed Swanson.

He could feel the water soak through his clothing and pull him down, he said later. Thirty yards downstream he clutched a bush and pulled them to safety.

“The water was raging through there so fast we barely made it,” said White, who is 6 feet, 1 inch tall.

After White pulled her from the water, Swanson, who is about 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighs less than 100 pounds, was nearly paralyzed from the cold and lay on the bank shivering, he said. He carried her to a house and called 911.

The wash is normally a dry channel about three feet wide. It became a roaring river 20 feet wide and up to six feet deep, said Capt. Robert Sheets of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The water was flowing so fast that it ripped all four tires off Swanson’s van and carried it about a mile, he said.

“It was rather awesome, very sobering,” said Sheets, who arrived at Sand Canyon and Valley Ranch roads in time to see the van traveling downstream.

Paramedics followed the van downstream but could not find Swanson, Sheets said. After White rescued her, she was helicoptered to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia and released.

“It was just a coincidence I was standing by the wash and happened to see her,” White said.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Edgington said White deserves “the highest praise.”

Santa Clarita City Councilman Howard (Buck) McKeon, who employs Swanson in one of his stores, called it “a miracle, not a coincidence. If he had not been there, she would have been gone right now.”