911 dispatcher sends mom to rescue kayaker

911 dispatcher sends mom, instead of the police, to rescue a kayaker stranded on the Columbia River. The 911 dispatcher knew the river, and knew that her mom could get there before police.

A 911 dispatcher in Washington state called on her own mother to rescue a stranded boater in the Columbia River, knowing her mother could kayak to the area faster than sending the sheriff's office patrol boat.

A 45-year-old kayaker was hanging onto a log piling Sunday afternoon after her kayak sank in swift current near a jetty, Wahkiakum County dispatcher Raedyn Grasseth told The Daily News .

The woman was paddling with a companion when her kayak sank.

"Jetties are very dangerous," Grasseth said Monday. "The currents around them are horrible. It sounds likes her kayak just got sucked toward the jetty and went down."

Her companion left to seek help.

The stranded woman "hung onto the jetty until she could climb up and get on to as much of the log piling as she could and waited," Grasseth said.

Grasseth notified the sheriff's office, then realized her mother, Cindy Faubion, and other members of her family lived nearby and could get there quicker.

"I knew they could be there within five to 10 minutes," Grasseth said.

She called her mother, Cindy Faubion, who is a kayaker. Faubion and other family members quickly paddled to the piling in a kayak and a skiff.

The rescued woman was cold and shaken but did not require medical care.

The woman was visiting from out of town, had limited boating experience and wasn't familiar with the treacherous waters about 30 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River.

"She's lucky she's alive, plain and simple," Grasseth said.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 911 dispatcher sends mom to rescue kayaker
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0402/911-dispatcher-sends-mom-to-rescue-kayaker
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe