BY Neil B. McGahee
When Mike Bearden arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, in April, he received a hero's welcome. Eight months earlier, Bearden, CE 71, and his wife, Jan, of White, Ga., were driving from Anchorage to Kenai on the last leg of a two-week vacation when they saw a Jeep flip and land upside down in a marsh.
Bearden and three other motorists scrambled out of their vehicles and leapt into the water to rescue a trapped woman and her 5-month-old daughter. For their courageous act, they were honored at the Real Heroes Breakfast sponsored by the American Red Cross of Alaska.
"Another car — it turned out the driver was drunk — tried to pass a long line of cars but ran out of room and swerved into the Jeep," Bearden said. "Before we knew it, both cars were in the water. All we could see were the tires."
For seven long minutes, the four men struggled in the icy water to push the Jeep on its side and free Kim Kennedy. They didn't know that Kennedy's infant daughter, Ellie, was still strapped in her car seat. As the men rocked the vehicle, someone spotted the baby, plucked her from the wreckage and handed her to Bearden.
"Suddenly there was a baby in my hands — her skin was ashen and she was lifeless," Bearden said. "We were all crying because we thought she was dead."
A police officer arrived and began administering infant cardiopulmonary resuscitation. On about the fourth compression, the baby gasped, Bearden said.
Shaken by the experience and suffering from hypothermia, Bearden and his wife left the scene and continued their journey but they spent the next couple of days wondering if Kim and Ellie had survived. They finally found a phone and called the Anchorage police and learned that mother and child were recovering nicely and wished to see them. Three days later, Bearden and the other rescuers visited Kennedy and baby Ellie in an Anchorage hospital.
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