Straight Out of a Movie

Hector Mariani covered the girl’s chest with his hands and instinctively began CPR, staring hard at her blue face and trying, with every push, to forget about the last time he did this, the last time he tried to save a child’s life but failed.

“Something just takes over and you have to put yourself out there again,” said Mariani, a Santa Ana police officer who was vacationing this week on the Colorado River, where 5-year-old Rosemary Graham of Huntington Beach was drowning in less than three feet of water.

“I knew this little girl was in trouble but no one was doing anything,” he said Thursday. “I had to do something. I had to move.”

Mariani, 49, said he was checking the oil in his boat Monday afternoon when he heard splashing and screaming from the beach nearby. He turned in time to see a man pulling a brown-haired girl, limp and blue, out of the water. Mariani said the girl’s mother, Jeannette Graham, had suffered a bloody nose during the rescue attempt and was frantically crying on the shore.

Without thinking, Mariani and a friend, Marilyn Willis, ran to the child and discovered she was not breathing and had no pulse. They placed her on a towel in the sand and started CPR--Mariani stationed himself over Rosemary’s chest while Willis, a labor and delivery nurse at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Anaheim, forced air into her mouth.

Seconds crept by, with no response from the skinny girl in the bright-red swimsuit. Her mother sobbed on her knees and more strangers gathered quietly around the scene. Mariani said he kept a mental clock of the time, and knew they were finishing the 10th cycle of CPR when their victim finally stirred.

“She started coughing and spitting up water,” he said. “She looked around and then she said, ‘Mama?’ It was straight out of a movie. I couldn’t have been more relieved.”

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San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said there’s no doubt Mariani and Willis saved Rosemary’s life; neither the victim’s relatives nor the dozens of beach-goers mulling around knew CPR. Officials said the girl had likely been under water more than two minutes.

“Everyone was hovering over them as they worked on the girl,” said Deputy Gregory Blair, who responded to the scene near Parker Dam on his patrol boat. “It was very tense. When she came around and started to spit up water, people started laughing and crying. . . . It was quite a scene.”

Rosemary was released from Lake Havasu Samaritan Hospital on Tuesday. Relatives could not be reached for comment Thursday. Willis said she last saw the groggy girl with paramedics who met them at the beach.

“I checked in with them later and she was doing fine, she has really no memory of the entire thing,” said Willis, who learned after the rescue that she is acquainted with the victim’s uncle. “I’m just glad we were there to help. It gave everybody quite a scare.”

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Mariani, a 22-year officer, said Rosemary’s recovery was a blessing for him as well. Last summer, he was among the first to respond to a drowning call in Santa Ana, where a 1-year-old boy was found at the bottom of his parents’ swimming pool. Mariani performed CPR and managed to rouse a heartbeat, but the child died at the hospital the next day.

“I felt really bad about it, still do,” Mariani said Thursday. “But this time, when we had a happy ending, it really lifted my spirits.”

Santa Ana Police Sgt. James McDaniel, who heard rumors of the rescue but received little help from Mariani in confirming them, said he called San Bernardino County and asked for a copy of the report.

“He just kind of shuffled around, not saying much about nothing,” McDaniel said of the patrol officer. “But we got him. He’s a hero and the world should know it.”