Siblings Save Girl From Drowning in Kiddie Pool

A 10-year-old San Clemente girl was saved from drowning Wednesday by her brother and sister, who found her tangled in a plastic pool cover, yanked her from the water and gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, authorities said.

Emergency workers said Cristyn Caughlin probably owes her life to the quick response of her siblings.

“It was really that close,” said Gary Layman, a spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority. “She was just a glug or two away from becoming full of water. A few more seconds and it would have been a different story.”

The incident happened shortly before 4 p.m. in Sea Ridge Estates, a terraced enclave of homes overlooking Camp Pendleton. Cristyn said she decided to cool off in a backyard kiddie pool, so she peeled back part of the plastic dust cover, dove in and tried to raise the rest of it from underneath.

“I thought I could just lift it up, but when I was under it, I couldn’t move it,” she said.

Authorities said water on top of the cover prevented her from moving it and trapped her inside the inflatable 3-foot-deep pool. As she struggled, she became entangled in the cover.

Her mother, brother and sister were inside the house when they heard a muffled sound outside. Brother Jonathan, 9, peered out the kitchen window. “I didn’t see my sister, but I did see a tangled-up thing,” he said. “That’s when I ran outside.”

Jonathan began pulling on the blue plastic cover, saw his sister’s hand and pulled her from the pool in a heap. As she lay on the wet grass unconscious, her lips a deep blue, the children’s mother, Pam, 40, shouted for the boy to call 911.

“A million things were going through my mind,” Pam Caughlin said. “How could something like that happen in three feet of water?”

Panicked, she tried to recall how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation when her daughter Stephanie, 11, swung into action. Stephanie, who had been trained in the technique at baby-sitting class earlier this year, said she pushed on her sister’s stomach twice, breathed into her mouth twice and repeated the process for a minute or more.

“She just woke up then,” Stephanie said.

The children, all students at Stony Brook Christian School in San Juan Capistrano, said Cristyn’s first words after being revived were, “Jesus saved me.”

Paramedics with the Fire Authority responded to the 911 call and took Cristyn to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, where she was examined and released a few hours later.

At the family’s home Wednesday night, Cristyn sat quietly in the lap of her father, Brian Caughlin, 37, as she described the ordeal. The lesson, she said: “Don’t swim under the cover.”

Her father, a plumbing contractor, said he doubted his daughter would ever get the chance to consider it again. “That pool is going bye-bye,” he said.