Dog walker uses branch to aid woman who fell into river

Hayley Hesseln didn’t think twice about risking her life to save another.

“I think, ‘What if somebody hadn’t have come along?’ It’s just too scary to think about,” Hesseln said the day after she crawled onto the frozen South Saskatchewan River and used a tree branch to rescue a woman who had plunged through the ice moments earlier.

Hesseln, who teaches agricultural economics at the University of Saskatchewan, took her dogs Mickey, Maude, Jack and Georgia for a walk in the Silverwood dog park early Sunday afternoon. As usual, she left the trail to walk through the brush near the river.

The first time she heard yelling, she figured it was some kids goofing around. When the shouting didn’t stop, she ran toward the river and saw three dogs and a flash of colour — a woman wearing a red parka immersed in the water, trying to crawl back on to the ice.

“I yelled to her that I was coming,” Hesseln said. “I was trying to break off these tree branches — I wanted something long so I didn’t go in after her, fall in the water.”

After dragging the woman back onto the ice, Hesseln swapped her warm parka for the woman’s drenched jacket. Neither of them had a working cellphone, so she ran back to a road to flag down a car.

Eventually, she said, two cars pulled over. The passengers called 911 and followed her tracks. After bundling her into more warm clothes the group walked her back.

Troy Davies, a spokesman for Medavie Health Services West, said Hesseln’s intervention almost certainly saved the woman’s life.

The incident began, Davies said, when the woman’s dogs chased some Canada geese out onto the ice. She was treated for hypothermia, but will be fine.