Angelo Mondragon had no idea that a trip to Windsor Lake with his family in July 2015 would end in saving a life.
The Fort Collins, Colorado plumber was swimming with his family when he felt something brush against his leg.
You know that feeling – you both do and don’t want to see what it might be. Luckily, Mongradon looked.
“It felt like something you normally wouldn’t feel in the water,” he said. “I did sort of a back kick to bring up whatever it was, and then I saw the bottom of a baby’s foot float up.”
It wasn’t a fish. It was a little girl. And Mondragon reacted as any father would.
“I saw just the bottom of her feet and then right then at that moment, that became my child, I reached in and I pulled her out like I would any of my babies,” the father of three told CBS Denver.
While it’s a popular swimming spot, it does not have lifeguards and the little girl wasn’t wearing a life vest.
When Mondragon pulled her to shore, be began screaming for help. Onlookers called 911 and two off-duty nurses were luckily on the beach that day and administered CPR.
“I grabbed her and carried her limp body to the shore,” he told The Colorodoan. “The girl was already blue. She wasn’t breathing.”
3-year-old Sitlali Fernandez was taken to the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland and later to Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colorado for more treatment, where a day later a hospital spokeswoman said she was in “good” condition.
That same day, Mondragon visited little Sitlali in the hospital.
“If I was not in that right spot at the right time, it could have been a search and rescue mission,” Mondragon said. “As I told the little girl’s mom, when I saw the baby’s toes that became my baby.”
The little girl’s mom is Emma Hernandez, who thanked the good samaritan profusely.
“There’s no words how much I can thank you. You saved her. You saved her. You saved my baby,” she said when she met Mondragon, according to PEOPLE.
Sitlali had hypothermia, fluid in her lungs, and was transferred to another hospital because doctors were worried about how long her brain had been without oxygen.
But a mere 3 days after her almost-tragic accident, she was home bouncing on a trampoline in her backyard with her siblings.
“She’s really strong, she’s really strong,” said Hernandez. “Her lungs are good, her heartbeat is good. Everything is good.”
Shortly after the rescue, Mondragon took steps to make sure this never happened to a child again. He went so far as to set up a GoFundMe to raise money for life vests for children playing at Windsor Lake who don’t have access to them. The fund raised $605 that year and Hernandez was committed to collecting more.
He said the whole thing could have been avoided if Sitlali had only been wearing a floatation device.
Be sure to scroll down to see the original news story about the heroic rescue followed by an interview with the little’s girl’s mother.
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