By Mark Schlinkmann
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — A worker hired to paint the KSDK television transmission tower helped save a man who climbed it Wednesday afternoon without authorization.
Steven Garcia, a broadcast tower technician, was one of several painters at the tower, a landmark in the Affton area of South County. He said the man said he was there to join the crew but the workers brushed him off.
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Garcia, 27, said the crew decided it was too windy to continue painting. As he was getting ready to drive off the site, Garcia said he noticed that the man, who was barefoot, had begun climbing the ladder inside the tower.
When he realized what was happening, Garcia said, he began to climb up himself to try to stop him. “I get to about 300 feet, he’s about 200 feet above me,” he told reporters. “I called to him...I said, Hey, please stop climbing. He wouldn’t stop.”
Realizing he wouldn’t catch him on foot, Garcia said he came back down and with the help of his co-workers, used a painting team basket operated on a cable-and-pulley system to more quickly get to the man.
Garcia said he got inside the tower above the man about 900 feet up just in time to block him but that the man resisted.
“I had to get my hands on him to physically stop him from climbing any higher,” he said. “I was concerned about him slipping. He was continually trying to climb out of my arms.”
Garcia held the man for about a half hour as firefighters with a countywide task force organized the rescue. After the basket was hoisted down, firefighters from the Maplewood Fire Department and the Mehlville and Affton fire protection districts went up in it.
By 4:10 p.m., the basket holding the rescuers, Garcia and the man reached the ground. The man was then taken to a hospital in police custody, Affton Fire Chief Ben Waser said.
Asked whether the man would face charges, Waser said that would be up to St. Louis County police. A county police spokeswoman, Vera Clay, on Wednesday night said that’s possible but it’s too soon to say. “Our first priority was making sure he was OK,” she said.
The transmission tower was turned off during the incident for safety reasons, fire department officials said.
Matt Wilcox, the Maplewood assistant fire chief and a leader on the countywide task force, called the operation “a very dangerous rescue.”
He commended Garcia, saying “he pretty much saved that man’s life. We were able to get him out. If not for him, this would have been a different outcome.”
Waser said he didn’t know what the unauthorized climber’s motivation was.
Garcia said the man told him “he was climbing to see the lights” but didn’t elaborate. Garcia said the man said he was 18, was out of school and “lives over yonder.” He said the man also told him he had not been planning to jump.
The 1,152-foot-tall tower is on Heege Road, near the Tower Tee golf driving range. Fire crews received the report of the climber about 2:35 p.m., said Lt. Jason Brice, a spokesman for the Affton and Lemay fire districts.
Various other fire departments responded to assist with the rescue.
Garcia, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, said he works for Fullwave Tower & Broadcast, which does maintenance on TV towers across the country.
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