Anonymous Including Video

This would have been the last picture we took of our little Isabella. I share this in hopes that it might save a life, or at least prevent others from having to go through what happened to our family recently.

The kids decided to get out of the pool and play on the playground across the street. That freed up my wife to join me and a couple friends who were playing tennis. While at the playground, our son took off Isabella’s floaties, thinking she doesn’t need them anymore since they were no longer swimming. But then she walked in front of her brother swinging and got hurt and started crying for Mommy. So Mommy rescued her, kissed her booboos, and brought her back to the tennis court. But no floaties. We were all engrossed in tennis and I got a strange intuition to check the pool. I NEVER get intuitions and can’t even recall a time where I ever got an intuition like this. I almost ignored it. I mean, I KNEW the kids went to the playground and were no longer swimming, so why check the pool? But I decided it wouldn’t hurt to just check.

So I started walking to the pool, bouncing a tennis ball along the way, not in any hurry because I knew no one was in the pool. When I could see about 75% of the pool, the water was not moving and I could hear no children. Splashing and laughter always accompany pool time. So I decided to turn around and head back to the tennis court. But something told me to just go ahead and check the entire pool, just in case. So I took another couple steps forward and there was my 2yo drowning in the deep end of the pool. It was surreal. I still cannot get the image out of my head. I saw my own daughter dying. You can’t really comprehend what’s going on in the moment and my instincts just kicked in.

I jumped in and grabbed her as quick as I could. She appeared to be breathing. She immediately coughed up water and then a few seconds later, threw up a lot more water. She started crying for Mommy again which was the greatest cry I could ever hear. We had no idea how long she was in the pool, but we were able to obtain security footage and she was drowning for 48 seconds. This is an eternity for a toddler to be in the water without the ability to swim. But it also means that I got my intuition to check the pool at about the exact time she walked into the water.

Thank you God. If you want to see how quickly something like this can happen, the security footage is linked below. She has already started her ISR lessons, which are swimming lessons for infants. This is something we wish we would have done and hope everyone knows exists. You can start ISR at just 6 months of age. This is still hard to relive and think about, but we were so fortunate. This could have easily turned out differently and others have not been as fortunate. I would not wish this on anyone and as difficult as it is to post this, I’m hoping it will possibly prevent this from happening to someone else.”