Construction Worker Pulls Girl From Bottom of Pool

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 in Laguna Niguel.

Tirzo Maldonado, 28, a plasterer from Santa Ana, said he was retrieving tools from his van near the pool around 1:30 p.m. when he heard a child screaming.

When he looked over, he saw a distressed young boy beside the pool and another child’s limp body on the bottom.

The 5-foot, 6-inch man jumped over a 6-foot metal fence, his clothes and working gloves still on, and dove into the pool to rescue the girl. When they surfaced, she wasn’t breathing, he said. He immediately began chest compressions, and the girl coughed up water and began breathing.

Paramedics arrived shortly

thereafter at the pool, which is part of the Palm Court condominium complex, and late Monday afternoon the girl’s relatives said she was doing well.

Spokesman Garry Layman of the Orange County Fire Authority, which responded to the near-drowning, said the girl was taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, where she was observed and released.

“It is a perfect hero story,” Layman said. If not for Maldonado, he said, the child would have died.

Layman said the girl and her 7-year-old brother, whose screams drew Maldonado’s attention, were staying with an aunt who lives in the complex.

It was not clear how the two children entered the pool area, which is fenced and requires a key. Witnesses said there was nobody else around at the time.

A board member of the homeowners association said children younger than 14 are not allowed in the pool area unsupervised.

“Thank God that the man knew CPR,” said the board member, who asked not to be identified. “If no one else had been around. . . . “

Meanwhile, co-workers and residents of the Palm Court complex hailed Maldonado as a hero.

“I want to shake his hand,” said Gina Siegel, a 12-year resident of the complex.

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

As his proud co-workers praised him in Spanish, declaring, “Es un heroe, es un heroe” (“He’s a hero, he’s a hero”), the soft-spoken man, his shoes still wet, cracked a shy smile and said, “I just feel like I did something good.”

The native of Oaxaca, Mexico, said the incident brought thoughts of his own 3-year-old son, who lives with his mother in Mexico and whom he hasn’t seen in two years.

“Have more care with kids,” Maldonado advised. “Don’t leave them in dangerous places alone.”

Six children have drowned in Orange County in the past two months. In 1998, seven children younger than 6 drowned in the county. Pool drownings are the leading cause of death for young children.

Layman said Monday’s incident was a reminder that children and even adults should not swim alone.