Caller’s Account of Oregon Waves

RUSH: Lillian in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Well, hello, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, ma’am.

CALLER: I also want to thank you for homeschooling me for 20 years.

RUSH: Ah, you’re more than welcome. I appreciate that.

CALLER: But I have a story to tell about Oregon’s coast. My daughter was up there, she was recovering from an automobile accident laying in the sun on the beach in Oregon next to one of those huge rocks that they have. And along came one of those sleeper waves, washed her right out to sea and all she remembers was going around in a circle like a washing machine, she said, and then she doesn’t remember anything else. And she was thrown up on the beach one mile away, and someone —

RUSH: She did the right thing, because what happened was she got involved in a rip current —

CALLER: Yes, that’s right.

RUSH: — and the worst thing you can do is fight it. You just go with it and let it take you. Keep your head above water —

CALLER: She didn’t have any choice, though, she was out, she was unconscious. But that’s what happened —

RUSH: That’s, you know, now, that’s a miracle.

CALLER: It is a miracle.

RUSH: To survive unconscious in a roiling rip current ocean for a mile.

CALLER: A mile. And it threw her up on the beach and somebody walking by happened to be a nurse with her boyfriend. They went down to see why she was laying there, and they said she’s not breathing so she sent him for the ambulance, and they came, took her to the hospital, dead on arrival. And when they got her in there they started using these panels or whatever they use, they slapped them back and forth and then put these saline needles, hot saline needles into her abdomen and they got her to breathe.

RUSH: This is your daughter you’re talking about.

CALLER: This is my daughter! And we’re talking about an hour here. And she was very thin, she had been in an automobile accident, everything was wrong with her, and they think her organs froze right away because there was no fat to protect her and anything, you know. And they took her to the Trauma Center and they saved her life. She should have been dead.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: It’s an unbelievable story and I’ve never heard it related, and when I heard what you told us and what I read in the paper today, I said, ‘That’s my daughter’s story.’ Incidentally her name is Maddie, and she called you once.

RUSH: How old was she when this happened?

CALLER: Maddie has three children and she couldn’t go on the class trip that day because of her back, she had so much back problems —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — and they wouldn’t let her go.

RUSH: Well, how old was she when this happened?

CALLER: Well, she’s 48 now, and it was about, hmmm, eight or nine years ago.

RUSH: So that would make her 39 or 40?

CALLER: Yeah, right.

RUSH: If you talk to her, I’m sure she’s still 39 or 40.

CALLER: Well, she’s holding herself together and she’s trying to mainstream herself, but she’s been through a lot.

RUSH: I bet.

CALLER: It’s been a real battle.

RUSH: Well, that is an amazing story, and it happened out there at Proposal Rock?

CALLER: Well, not at that same beach but, you know, the coastline is the same all the way up there and it has long flats where you walk out a long ways before you get to the water.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And she was just laying in the sun, she loves to do that when she comes to Cape Cod, that’s what she does, and unbeknown to her, there had been an earthquake in Japan the day before, and I think it caused —

RUSH: Ah, yeah, one of those unforeseen tsunamis.

CALLER: Right, right. And that took her out, and I got a call that my daughter drowned. That was my call.

RUSH: That is just mind-boggling. Well, if you’re just joining us, folks — thanks Lillian, very much for that — if you’re just joining us, Lillian called to tell us this story because a tragic thing happened at place on the coast in Oregon, Proposal Rock, people go there to propose to each other and this guy was taking his girlfriend out there to propose, and outta nowhere a big three foot wave comes up and sweeps her out to sea and she’s gone before this guy even got the ring out. He looked up, he was going to take off his coat, go out there and get her, he looked up again and she was gone. When he first looked up and noticed her gone, she was 30 feet out there. It’s hard to visualize this, but it obviously it happened. What are the odds that we’re going to have somebody who survived one of these call us and tell us about it? On what other show would this happen?