Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
LEESBURG - "Hometown heroes" is not a name Dan and Carolyn Dye ever thought would apply to them. But today they're just happy for the reason it does.
Without the quick thinking and prompt action of the Dyes and their son, 10-year-old Teela Schwartz probably wouldn't be alive today.
As Dan Dye told the story this morning, he and his wife were getting ready for a cookout Thursday evening when their son ran in and told them a neighbor boy's sister was buried in rocks.
Dan said one of his neighbors is digging a basement, and he had previously warned kids to stay away from the loose dirt and gravel. But last night four children were trying to dig a tunnel in the sand when the walls collapsed.
Carolyn ran to the hole and saw a girl up to her knees in sand; the boy said that was not his sister - his sister was "under the rocks."
When Dan arrived on the scene, he helped the girl who was up to her knees, thinking that was the only problem. No, said the girl, my cousin is underneath me. "We couldn't see anything," Dan said. "We didn't even know where to start digging."
After frantically moving big dirt clods they saw a limp wrist sticking out of the sand, he said. When they uncovered her face, they saw she was blue and her eyes were wide open and fixed, and she was unconscious.
"I'll never forget what I saw," he said. "I've never seen anything like that in my life."
Dan and Carolyn finally uncovered Teela enough that they could grab her by the shoulders and pull her out. Her mouth and nose were full of sand, he said.
"As soon as I saw her I thought she was gone. But we just kept working."
They tried to remove as much sand as possible so they could get her breathing again. "We were digging stones the size of a nickel out of her mouth," he said.
Dan has no idea how long Teela was buried before he and Carolyn got to her. He does know, however, that the four or five minutes it took them to uncover her felt like a lifetime.
"It seemed like an awful long time before we even got her up out of the sand," he said.
Lucky for Teela, Carolyn had CPR training and told Dan how to give Teela mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Finally Teela began coughing up sand.
"When she started coughing, we knew she could breathe," Dan said.
Meanwhile, the Dyes' son had run to his grandmother's house and called 911; Teela's brother had run home and gotten their father. The paramedics worked on Teela and took her to Kosciusko Community Hospital, where she was treated for lower back and abdominal pain and complained of throat pain. She was released the same night.
"She's very, very, very fortunate that he was there when he was, because that's what saved her," said Kathy Harmon, director of Plain Township EMS. "If he hadn't been there I honestly would give her more than a 50-50 chance."
Ironically, the Dyes came very close to not even being home last night. Dan said they had planned to go to his sister's house but at the last minute decided to pick her up and bring her to their house for a cookout.
"The man upstairs was watching that little girl," Dan said.
