A passerby jumped into a frigid Florida pond to save a pregnant woman from her sinking car recently – giving her the opportunity to safely birth her baby hours later, according to authorities and those at the center of the riveting rescue story.
As she told it to local news outlet WPTV, Sheldy Apollon of Florida’s Port St Lucie community was 34 weeks pregnant, with pre-eclampsia, and driving to a prenatal massage arranged for her by her fiance on the morning of 6 February when she began feeling dizzy. Apollon, who was also celebrating her birthday that day, stopped to try to let it pass before resuming her trip. When she realized she wasn’t feeling better, she attempted to pull over again.
Only that time she inadvertently plunged headlong into a pond.
“I started to feel some water on my feet, so I started to panic a little,” Apollon said to WPTV of the moments when her vehicle started sinking into the pond.
Fortunately for her, Logan Hayes, of nearby Sebastian, was running errands in that area at the time. He saw Apollon’s car barrel into the pond and – despite temperatures in the low 40s fahrenheit as well as an active cold weather advisory – he instinctively dove into the water.
The only door Hayes could open once he reached the vehicle was the rear passenger, he later recalled to WPBF, another Florida outlet. All the other doors were submerged.
Hayes told WPBF that Apollon was frantic in the driver’s seat when they saw each other. She was asking how to get out when, as he told WPTV, Hayes said: “You have to come with me.”
Apollon climbed between the two front seats into the back of her car as the vehicle started tilting, causing more water to flood the car. After she managed to get out, Hayes wrapped his arms around her hips to help her swim to shore and realized: “Oh, my God – this lady is pregnant,” according to what he told WPBF and WPTV.
Meanwhile, right around then, Apollon’s car completely sank, he said to WPBF. Hayes was subsequently able to swim with Apollon to the shore roughly 50ft away. Emergency responders who had been summoned by someone else were waiting for the pair, the local fire rescue department said in a statement.
After rescue divers went under the water to make sure no one else was in her car, Apollon was brought to HCA Florida Lawnwood hospital in the community of Fort Pierce to be treated for serious injuries, officials’ statement said. Doctors there performed an emergency C-section – and Apollon gave birth to a 3lb, 14oz baby girl named Ivory Atara within hours of her fateful encounter with Hayes.
The hospital’s chief of trauma, Dr David Rubay, didn’t mince words in an interview with WPTV when addressing the weight of Hayes’s actions with respect to Apollon and Ivory.
“Getting someone to jump in and open the door in the beginning – that made the whole difference,” Rubay said.
WPBF reported that Ivory’s father, Woodley Sully, had personally expressed his gratitude to Hayes for rescuing Apollon. “The only way I can explain this is God,” Sully said to WPTV. “You just have to believe, and … my girls are here, so I’m grateful.”
Apollon, too, thanked Hayes for essentially giving her and her newborn the chance to share a birthday after such a close brush with death, WPTV reported.
“Our bond is just tighter than ever,” Apollon said to the station of her and her daughter. “It’s surreal.”
For his part, one of the first things Hayes did after rescuing Apollon was call his own mother, Candy, she wrote on social media. His voice shook with emotion as he relayed to her what it was like to have saved Apollon and the “new life to be” within her.
Hayes in turn told WPBF that the day he left an indelible mark on the lives of Apollon and her family ended up being “a different level of crazy”.
“All the things that are positive – it’s just, like, wow,” Hayes remarked to WPTV. “Crazy to feel like I’m a part of something like this.”
