She deserves a gold medal for this rescue.
A blind paralympic athlete and her loyal guide dog found and saved a lost elderly woman who had wandered off on a dense wilderness trail near Vancouver Island, Canada, authorities said Thursday.
Jessica Tuomela, a gold medal-winning swimmer who goes trail running in Saanich, BC, was asked by a frantic neighbor in mid-May to help track down the aging relative, who suffers from memory loss, Tuomela told Globalnews.ca.
“It was incredible when I realized we were doing a rescue, not a recovery,” Tuomela, 39, said. “I just was really trying to remain calm.”
Tuomela’s Golden Retriever, Lucy, had been trained in search and rescue, so they hit the path with a pre-collected “scent kit” from the missing gal in an effort to sniff out her location.
The heroic duo had run roughly two miles when Lucy pulled Tuomela onto a sandy patch near Elk Lake, a sprawling 17-foot-deep body of water — where she heard the lost woman’s voice talking to the dog.
A “wonderful” bystander who had tagged along to help identify the woman as the right person, said Tuomela, who was blinded by retinoblastoma at age 3.
“Within seconds, my backup handler caught up and confirmed that this is who we were looking for,” Tuomela said.
The tenacious trailblazers then returned the elderly victim home safely.
“After she had been reunited with her family, I was definitely probably shaking for about 45 minutes,” Tuomela said.
Paul Coley — a former FBI agent whose firm trained Tuomela and Lucy on scent trailing — told the news outlet she called him for advice before the mission and he was “elated” with the happy ending.
“I get chills every time we think about it,” said Coley, co-founder of Scent Evidence K9 in Tallahassee, Fl.
Tuomela said she now wants to get the word out that she and her four-legged friend are “available to help people.”
“I would rather us be called out and not needed,” she said, stressing the importance of scent kits, which contain a tamper-proof jar and gauze pad.
“If there’s a way to keep family members safe and be proactive, then let’s do it.”
In May 2006, Tuomela won two gold medals at the Belgian Paralympic Championships for the 50-meter breaststroke and 100-meter backstroke.
