A 27-year-old pregnant mother, Alyssa DeWitt, is being celebrated as a hero after she rescued four children from drowning at Lake Michigan’s First Street Beach Pier. On a windy Tuesday afternoon, Alyssa hesitated before taking her children to the beach, concerned about the strong winds. However, she ultimately decided to go.
While at the beach, Alyssa noticed a group of girls, all under 15, struggling in the water. Alarmed, she saw one girl waving her arms for help, which prompted her to act. “I got up, pulled my kids out of the water, and ran out onto the pier,” she recounted.
Alyssa attempted to call 911, but the noise from the waves made it difficult for the dispatcher to hear her. Realizing she couldn’t wait for help, she laid on her stomach on the slippery pier to reach the girls. Despite being five months pregnant, she fought against the waves to pull them to safety. “Every time I’d get one of them halfway up, a big wave would come smashing into us,” she explained.
“My turning point was when one of the little girls looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to die.’ That was it for me and I was like ‘I’m not going to let you die, I’m going to get you out of this water, I promise.’”
She managed to pull all three girls out of the water and over the pier before the group set off back towards the shore to rescue a fourth girl who had managed to get closer to shore but couldn’t stand because her leg was injured. “I honestly do not know how I did it, it was pure adrenaline at that point,” Alyssa said.
Once all the children were safe on the beach, emergency services arrived. Alyssa sustained a swollen wrist but both she and her unborn child were unharmed after a check-up at the hospital.
While there are numerous lessons and inspirations to draw from this incident, I want to beam our TORCH on Alyssa’s determination and predisposition to kindness. Despite being five months pregnant, she was driven by compassion and chose to risk her own safety to save the lives of four young girls. If we all embraced a mindset of thoughtfulness and selflessness in our actions, the world would be a much more peaceful and beautiful place.