This Colorado Woman Is Being Called Hero for Rescuing 3 Children From a Frozen Pond, Risking Her Own Life in the Process

Every parent’s worst nightmare is the possibility of something bad happening to your children when they’re unattended. And sadly, deadly mistakes happen every day. But fortunately, there are also good Samaritans out there who don’t think twice about rushing to the rescue of people in need — even when it puts them in a dangerous situation themselves.

Like 23-year-old Dusti Talavera, a Colorado woman who recently made headlines for rescuing three children who were drowning in a frozen pond.

The incident happened on Sunday, when Talavera noticed through her window that three young children were playing on an iced-over pond in the middle of her apartment complex. And suddenly, all three children disappeared, breaking through the ice and plunging into the frozen water.

Without thinking twice, Talavera put her shoes on and ran outside to help the kids, ages 4, 6 and 11.

“Nobody was outside. It was me. I knew it was me that had to do it,” Talavera said at a news conference on Monday. “Before I even realized it, I was out there in the middle of the pond.”

But the rescue wasn’t an easy one.

While Talavera quickly rescued the 4-year-old and 11-year-old, it was when she got to the 6-year-old that she ran into some difficulty.

“That’s when I fell in the pond,” Talavera told a group of local reporters. “For the third kid, I tried to hold her head up. I tried to hold my head up.”

It was thanks to the quick thinking of the children’s 16-year-old cousin that Talavera and the 6-year-old girl made it out of the pond. According to Talavera, the teenage boy threw a rope out into the middle of the pond and helped Talavera drag herself and the little girl to dry land.

“I’m thankful for that young man who threw the rope,” Talavera said during the press conference. “I would have been in there longer, she would have been in there longer… I don’t know what would have happened.”

Soon after, first responders arrived on the scene. And while the 4-year-old and 11-year-old were unharmed, the 6-year-old girl was in bad shape — she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

“We reverted back to what we were trained to do,” one of the emergency responders, Deputy Justin Dillard, told the Denver Gazette. “We’re all fathers and we all have young kids. It’s hard to see a 6-year-old girl whose face is blue with her eyes open and not responding, not breathing.”

Thankfully, after administering CPR, the girl began to breathe again. She was then transferred to the local Children’s Hospital. Despite being in serious condition, the young girl is expected to survive.

And now, Dusti Talavera is being called a hero for her brave actions that day.

“What she did was amazing,” said a visibly emotional Corey Sutton, one of the emergency responders firefighters who arrived on the scene. “We were back at the fire station talking about how brave she was. I have four boys and…I hope if this happened to one of mine, that somebody like her was close by.”