She did exactly what she was trained to do. She was cool, knowledgeable, hugely competent. And a boy is alive today because she alone understood he was only a few more mouthfuls of water away from dying.
Shortly after 7:40 p.m. Friday, May 23, Molly Billings, 18, was the sole lifeguard on duty at Sand Creek Country Club when a 16-year-old CHS underclassman leapt off the diving board. Within moments Billings recognized that the boy was struggling—despite her being told by his friends that he can swim and was in no danger—and after seeing him pull down on another child, then sink, she dove in herself. Billings succeeded in hauling the boy to the surface and, with the help of two others at the scene, Joseph Rurode and Stephen Wells, lifted him onto the pool’s coping, where she immediately began CPR. Billings performed three compressions with rescue breaths before she detected a pulse and the boy gasped for air, then remained by his side, monitoring him, until EMS arrived.
Cpl. Alexias DeJesus of the Chesterton Police Department gave this account. “As I got beside (the boy), I noticed his breathing was agonal, his eyes were unresponsive and rolling around continuously, and he had a white foam around the perimeter of his mouth,” DeJesus stated in her report. “I attempted to perform sternum rubs with minimal response. A few times (the boy) did open his eyes when someone said his name.”
Rurode and Wells, for their part, “advised they continued to cheer on (Billings) and assist in any way until medics and officers arrived,” DeJesus added.
The boy was subsequently transported to Northwest Heath-Porter and then airlifted to Lurie’s Children’s Hospital in Chicago, where he was checked for possible neurological or cardiac damage. None was found and on the next day, Saturday, May 24, he was released and expected to make a full recovery. Staff at Lurie’s were particularly impressed by the boy’s rapid improvement and commended Billings for her high degree of skill and her extraordinary poise.
All the boy can remember, DeJesus noted, was that, on jumping off the diving board, “he swallowed a lot of water and panicked.”
Not panicking in the remotest was Billings, a former CHS swimmer certified in lifeguarding and CPR by Matthew Pavlovich in the high school pool. Instead she trusted her intuition, trusted her training, and made the water rescue of a boy much bigger than herself look easy.
Billings—who will graduate on Wednesday, June 4, as a member of CHS Class of 2025—is, like all true heroes, modest. “I was just doing my job and I’m so glad he is doing so well,” she told the Town of Chesterton.
So give the last word to Billings’s mom, Mindi, who isn’t surprised by her daughter’s mettle but is gratified by it. “I am just so proud of her and her ability to remain calm and focused and put her training into action when needed,” he said. “Molly will be going to school in the fall to pursue nursing and I can’t think of a more perfect career for her.”
Well done, Molly. Very well done. And thank you for your service to this community!
