A 16-year-old Maine girl swam 600 yards to shore to get help for her sister and father after their boat capsized, officials said.
Kiana French, of Skowhegan, was fishing on Parlin Pond in western Maine Sunday with her father, Gary, and 14-year-old sister, Cierrah, when their 12-foot aluminum boat started taking on water, the Morning Sentinel reported.
Kiana frantically tried to bail water out using one of her sister’s cowboy boots, but the pair was “in the water” within moments as her father held onto the boat, she said.
“I made sure she was OK, and I tried to convince Dad to put his life jacket on,” French recalled Monday. “He was in shock. He wasn’t even trying. He just hung onto the boat.”
Knowing she had to act quickly, Kiana, who was wearing a tank top, sweatshirt and jeans at the time, sprang into action and started swimming to shore, thinking currents and conditions would soon deteriorate further.
“They say I swam a long ways, but I wasn’t really thinking about it,” Kiana told the newspaper. “I was sad to leave my sister and dad behind but I feel like it was the right thing to do.”
After swimming some 1,800 feet to shore, Kiana said, she stripped off her jeans, sweatshirt and tank top because she was “getting really cold” as she screamed for help.
Kiana’s cries caught the attention of an off-duty game warden’s wife, who told her husband she heard someone screaming for help. That sent Kris MacCabe and his neighbor, Don West, into action and the pair soon found the teen on the shoreline, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife said.
“Kris placed Kiana in the boat of Don West, and directed Ray Levesque, another camp owner who was helping, out to the middle of the lake approximately 1800 feet from where they found Kiana,” department officials said.
The rescue crew soon found Gary and Cierrah French in the water, suffering from hypothermia. French and his daughters were later examined by paramedics but didn’t need further treatment, officials said.
The three put on lifejackets after their boat sank, but only Kiana was able to swim back to shore, where she stripped off her clothing to get warmer and to move faster, saying she saw it once on a reality television show, according to wildlife officials.
McCabe’s wife said she only spotted Kiana as she ran along a densely forested, rocky shoreline due to the contrast of her bare skin.
Kiana’s grandmother, Alicia Blodgett, said she believes “somebody was watching over” Kiana, Cierrah and their father throughout the scary ordeal.
“And the wardens and those people on shore, I can’t thank them enough because they really, really helped them,” Blodgett told the Morning Sentinel. “They were awfully nice people.”
