SAN DIEGO — A Good Samaritan risked his own health and safety to rescue a woman from nearly drowning in an East County lake earlier this week.
Witnesses said that leading up to the near drowning Monday evening, the 52-year-old victim appeared under the influence and was behaving extremely erratically, screaming at another woman and walking in and out of traffic.
That behavior lasted for about an hour, before the woman waded into the middle of Lindo Lake, as a large crowd gathered, including deputies and park rangers.
"She entered the water down here and she swam out immediately, yelling that she wanted to shower and stuff like that," said Lakeside resident, Scot Wolfe, who had witnessed the woman, who was clearly in distress, enter the lake while hurling obscenities at the authorities.
"She was floating around," he told CBS 8. "She would stand up every once in while, yelling vulgarities and stuff like that,"
About a half an hour in, she appeared more and more fatigued, beginning to slip under the water more frequently.
"Her back floats turned to forward floats," Wolfe said. "And then she comes up for a second or two and goes back down,"
At this point, deputies had called for a search-and-rescue boat and the Sheriff Department's crisis negotiations team.
Wolfe realized, though, as the woman remained submerged longer and longer, that it was time to take action.
"At the point she was down for 30 seconds, that's where I walked down to the water and told the officers I was going in," he explained.
As 56-year-old Wolfe, who suffers from a heart condition himself, waded toward the struggling victim, deputies followed after him.
"I could see her face was blue, her lips were blue," he said.
He started chest compressions on the woman in the water, but quickly realized he couldn't continue that and bring her to shore.
"Right then, the police officer showed up, and he grabbed her by the arm and just started dragging her in," he said.
Back on shore, the deputies then performed CPR on the woman.
"She started moving, started coughing a little bit," Wolfe added. "They got her heart going, she started breathing, and that's when paramedics showed up."
While some bystanders questioned why deputies waited to go in to the water, the Sheriff's Department stressed that "every deputy will do everything to save someone's life," according to Lt. Scott Roller, but also pointed out the risks involved, saying they have to consider their own safety too.
As for Wolfe and his life-saving actions, while he's being hailed a hero, he rejects that label.
"It wasn't some super hero who did this," he told CBS 8. "It was just a guy who's a dad, who's a son, a father, grandpa...and that is someone's daughter, somebody's sister, somebody's mother, maybe. It was a human being."
The woman was taken to Grossmont hospital, where she is expected to make a full recovery.
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