Former Sitcom Star Rescues Woman

Todd Bridges, the 35-year-old former star of the TV sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” may have saved a paraplegic woman from drowning Thursday when her wheelchair rolled into a lake in Encino, according to the victim and authorities at the Department of Recreation and Parks.

Stella Kline, 50, who fishes regularly at Lake Balboa Park, said her electric-powered chair lurched into the 27-acre lake about 1 p.m. after her fishing line caught on the chair’s joystick.

Although the water was three feet deep at most, Kline said she was buckled into the heavy chair, which had tilted on its side and forced her head under water.

The former child star, whose run-ins with the law and troubles with drugs made him a tabloid news staple in the mid-1980s and ‘90s, was fishing with family members a few feet away. Kline said he immediately jumped in, eventually righting her and the chair with help from his brother, James Bridges, 40.

“I was thanking God that he was there,” said Kline, of Reseda. “And you know, everybody’s been saying nothing but bad stuff about Todd Bridges on the news and in the papers. . . . He has a heart of gold.”

Lifeguards at the park arrived after the brothers had dragged Kline from the water.

“If it wasn’t for Todd Bridges and his brother, she could have died,” lifeguard Jaime Morado said Friday. “It was lucky for her that they assisted her.”

Kline was treated at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and released, Fire Department officials said.

“We felt God put us there at the right time to save this lady’s life, because there was no one else around,” Todd Bridges said.

James Bridges said he didn’t think Kline would have been able to free herself from the chair. “That chair weighed a ton,” he said.

On the popular series “Diff’rent Strokes,” which aired from 1978 to 1986, Bridges and actor Gary Coleman starred as a pair of disadvantaged African American brothers who are cared for by a wealthy white family.

Bridges had a number of run-ins with the law. In 1990, he was acquitted of attempting to kill a Texas drug dealer. Three years later, he was arrested on charges of stabbing a tenant at his Sun Valley house, but prosecutors decided that he had acted in self-defense and did not file charges. He also pleaded guilty to separate drug and weapons charges that year.

In 1997, he was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly ramming a friend’s car with his vehicle after an argument. No charges were filed, according to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

Todd Bridges’ mother, Betty Bridges, 59, said Friday that her son has been clean and sober for eight years.

“We’ve had eight years to get ironed out,” she said. “This is just a part of what he is today; he’s just a good human being.”

Kline said she didn’t recognize the actor at first, but was told who he was by paramedics as they were loading her into the ambulance: “I said, ‘Todd Bridges? Who?’ They said, ‘That’s the one who played Willis on ‘Diff’rent Strokes.’ ‘

“I was a huge fan!” Kline said.