Worker Credited With Saving Girl From Drowning

A quick-thinking construction worker was credited Monday with saving the life of a 10-year-old girl who had sunk to the bottom of a swimming pool.

Tirzo Maldonado, 28, a plasterer from Santa Ana, was retrieving tools from his van about 1:30 p.m. when he heard the screams of a young boy, he said.

He found a distressed 7-year-old boy who showed him the girl’s limp body on the bottom of a shallow pool at the Palm Court condominium complex.

The 5-foot-6 man jumped over a 6-foot fence and dove into the pool, still wearing his clothes and work gloves. When he brought the girl to the surface, she wasn’t breathing, he said.

He immediately began chest compressions, and the girl coughed up water and began drawing air. Paramedics arrived shortly afterward, and late Monday the girl’s relatives said she was doing well.

It was not clear how the two children gained access to the pool area, which is fenced in and requires a key.

In front of his supervisor’s home in Santa Ana, Maldonado, a Mexican immigrant who has worked in the Laguna Niguel project for the last two months, said he was just glad he could help.

“I just feel like I did something good.”