EVERETT — What started as a casual, sparkling late summer day for three men turned into one they’ll never forget.
They wound up apparently saving a woman’s life.
Ted Measor, 48, spent Thursday morning fishing for salmon with a friend near Edmonds on Puget Sound. They didn’t have any luck.
They returned to the boat launch at the 10th Street Marina in Everett about 12:30 p.m. About the same time, Geoff Aldcroft, 57, was standing on the shore talking to his friend, Toby Black, 27, who was working at his job as a sampler for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. He checks anglers to make sure they’re complying with the fishing laws.
“It was kind of a slow day fishing. I had checked a few boats coming back,” Black said.
Before Measor got out of his boat, he saw something floating in the water.
“I joked that it kind of looked like a body,” he said.
Then Measor saw that was exactly what it was. He saw no movement.
He yelled to the shore for someone to call 911, that there was a dead person in the water.
Right about the same time, Aldcroft saw the body, too.
“I just noticed this something pink in the water, this pink sweater,” he said.
Then Aldcroft saw the woman’s head move.
While another bystander called 911, the three men rushed to where the woman was floating, face down. They pulled her out of the water and onto the dock.
“We thought she was dead. She was blue,” Aldcroft said.
Black started chest compressions on the woman, part of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedure, Measor said.
“He did about 15 chest compressions and she started coughing,” he said.
Then the men rolled her onto her side and she coughed some more and “took a couple of breaths.”
She never spoke, she just seemed dazed and groaned a little, the men said.
Shortly, aid crews arrived and were taking her to an ambulance.
“She had her head lifted up and she was looking around like she was trying to figure out where she was at,” Measor said.
The woman was listed in satisfactory condition Friday at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett.
Everett police classified the case as a suicide attempt, Sgt. Robert Goetz said Friday. A man at the boat launch told several witnesses that he saw the woman walk to the end of one of the piers, place her wallet on the dock and jump into the water.
It was only a couple of minutes later that she was found floating, said Aldcroft, of Lake Stevens.
Everett fire officials couldn’t say for sure if the men’s actions were the determining factor in the woman’s apparent recovery. Measor and Aldcroft, however, credited Black for saving the woman’s life.
“Without him, we’d be talking about somebody who was hauled off to the morgue,” said Measor, who lives in Everett. “I never imagined that person was revivable.”
Black, who lives in Seattle, works as a fish checker at different locations around Puget Sound, he said. In the spring, he had some time off. For no particular reason, he decided to take a class in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
“I wasn’t doing much and decided to take a class and thought it might come in handy sometime,” he said.
Black gave credit to the two other men and said others at the scene helped as well.
“You never like to see anything like that with anyone,” Black said. “You never know what’s going to happen anywhere.”
Regarding saving the woman’s life, “If that’s the case, you feel good,” he said.
“Hopefully,” Measor said, “she’ll make good on her second chance at life.”
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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