Thanks to the quick actions of a group of teenagers, a New Jersey family is resting easy after a day that could have ended in tragedy.
It all started when Rich Heid and Stephanie Irlbeck took their two kids, 8-year-old Olivia and 4-year-old RJ, to a country club near their Middletown home for their very first sledding adventure.
“We have two saucer sleds, but my husband insisted on bringing this big blow-up inner tube sled. We spent half an hour sitting in the car blowing that thing up,” Stephanie explained. “Little did I know that inflatable sled would save their lives.”
When the family arrived, the main sledding hill was crowded, so they headed to a smaller one. They didn’t realize there was a pond at the bottom of the hill because it was mostly covered in snow. The kids went down once and loved it, but as they piled into their inflatable toboggan again, things went haywire.
As the sled picked up speed, it flipped around backward and veered off course. When it hit an icy patch close to the frozen pond, the kids flew into the center of the pond and landed on the thin ice. The frozen layer cracked loudly, and the sled floated for a few seconds before it started to sink into 7 feet of icy water.
As the sled picked up speed, it flipped around backward and veered off course. When it hit an icy patch close to the frozen pond, the kids flew into the center of the pond and landed on the thin ice. The frozen layer cracked loudly, and the sled floated for a few seconds before it started to sink into 7 feet of icy water.
“Kieran just walked right in and got them,” Stephanie said. “All the boys helped… they are amazing.” Little Olivia agreed with her mother, adding, “I was soaking wet, freezing, and scared. The boys really helped us.”
Stephanie shudders to think what could have happened if the boys hadn’t been there. She wrote a post on a Middletown community Facebook page, praising the teens and their parents.
“I just want to say you are raising AMAZING BOYS,” she wrote. “Not only did they stop a potentially catastrophic situation, they didn’t even want anything in return. (We gave them everything we had, including my husband’s boots because Kieran was SOAKED.) They were trying to calm both of my kids down, you can imagine how scared they were. Thank you. THANK YOU for having such AMAZING KIDS.”
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