Andrea Hampton

Almost 4 years ago my daughter had an incident. We had done ISR training with her but she really wasn’t the best. Our instructor had a baby earlier than expected and with time we gave up and just put our independent 2 yr old on a puddle jumper so she could do her own thing.

One cooler night she thought she was done swimming and asked us to take off the puddle jumper. Shortly afterwards another child came to me to notify me she wasn’t swimming. She was face down, blue and lifeless in the pool. I pulled her from the pool and did 2 rounds of cpr and was able to get her back.

We spent the night in the hospital and were discharged with no complications. That night she jumped in, she relied on the “vertical float” and drove herself to the bottom of the pool where she then drowned. We were lucky. We have since made sure she is trained and confident in swimming and the only life jackets we use at the lake is hyperlite Indy. She’s now almost 6 and is proficient in swimming.