By Jacqueline Tempera
The Providence Journal
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Rescuers standing at the end of Hazard Avenue tracked a near-drowning woman’s location by her screams for 30 minutes Wednesday night.
By the time Kris Hopkins, an off-duty Middletown firefighter, jumped into the rough surf, her desperate cries sounded like gurgles, he said in an interview with The Providence Journal on Thursday afternoon.
Hopkins, who just happened to be at the beach on Wednesday night, swam 100 yards on the dark foggy night and held the 39-year-old woman in the cold ocean water until help came. He may have saved her life.
Just an hour earlier, Hopkins was sitting along the beach with his three children and his partner, watching one of his “favorite surf breaks” and the sunset, he said. The swells were unusually high — some 9 to 14 feet — because of the recent hurricanes. He wanted to show “his boys” — 14-year-old Kristof and 10-year-old Gregory — one of the spots he paddles out to frequently.
When the family was packing up to leave, he noticed police cars “driving like a crazy burger” toward the water. The kids were curious, so they walked back onto the beach to check out the action.
It became clear that Hopkins, who joined the Middletown Fire Department in 2006, would need to be more than a spectator. Hopkins is a lifelong surfer and is one of a handful of certified rescue swimmers in the state. A friend of his held a training session in Charlestown this week, so Hopkins had thrown his equipment in the car. He never made it to the lesson, but the gear came in handy.
In about 10 minutes, he convinced the fire captain in charge of the scene that he was ready and capable to do the rescue. Wearing his yellow helmet, a wet suit and a pair of flippers, he climbed down toward the water and his hand slipped on some “black slime” coating the rocks.
A wave hit him and while disoriented and underwater he became acutely aware that his children were watching from the shore.
“It was hard enough to spin me around,” Hopkins said. “I was dragged across the rocks, and sucked back out ... I really didn’t want to scare them.”
Using the momentum of the wave, he propelled himself out further toward the sobbing woman. She had a buoy that a police officer had thrown her, but seemed to be running out of energy, Hopkins said. When he reached her, he put a life jacket over her head and “told her stories.”
“I just let her know who I was and that I was down by the water and just happened to have my gear,” he said. “And that it was an amazing scenario that we were out there floating in the ocean together.”
She was cold and falling asleep, but Hopkins did his best to keep her warm and alert for the 20 more minutes it took for the Coast Guard ship to arrive.
Middletown’s interim Fire Chief Robert McCall, Hopkins’s boss, said in their department of 31 firefighters, 10 of them have been trained in recent years as rescue swimmers, he said.
Wednesday night the training really paid off.
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