Piper Clark, Kirk McGinnis and Leslie McGinnis are nominated for our News 3 Everyday Hero Humanitarian Award. The winner will receive $2,500 from us and a donation to a charity of their choice from our segment sponsor Southern Bank.
To vote for the 2024 News 3 Everyday Hero Humanitarian Award, scroll to the end of this article.
It was a neighborhood, end-of-the-school-year pool party, that went from a celebration to near drowning.
Piper Clark, who was 12 at the time, was playing a game with the other kids and spotted something—the brother of one of her best friends at the bottom of the pool.
Initially, she didn't know what to think.
"I feel like I thought he was maybe joking around like at the bottom," Piper said. "I didn't completely know something wasn't right, I kinda just knew something was off and even if something wasn't off, I was still going to get him up to the surface."
Leslie McGinnis, who was sitting with the other parents, noticed something was very wrong from the tone of Piper's voice and saw the color of the lifeless six-year-old she was carrying.
"I heard her in the middle of the pool. I look up and see her in the middle of the pool and she had something on her shoulder," McGinnis said. "It took me several seconds to register because what I saw was something, the color was unreal. I will never forget the color—pasty, blue. I just remember looking and thinking for a split second, what does she have on her shoulder but then I saw her look of distress."
Once Leslie realized Piper was holding a child, she sprang to her feet.
"I quickly ran over and as I'm running over I yelled my husband's name," Leslie said.
Kirk McGinnis, an off-duty Newport News firefighter, jumped to his feet as he heard his wife screaming his name.
"She just yelled, 'Kirk, Kirk' and into the pool, she went in and I didn't know what was going on, and stood up and I saw what was happening,"
Leslie jumped in fully clothed, headed for Piper.
"I swam over to her. I grabbed him from her and swam back over to the side, where Kirk was waiting," Leslie said.
"When they got to the side, I knelt down, I grabbed him by his hands, picked him up, laid him down on the pavement," Kirk said. "I've been a firefighter for 17 years. I'm also a paramedic. I was just thinking I can't let him die."
Leslie watched her husband trying to save the child and it was scary.
"Just the panic—he was lifeless, no movement, non-responsive, nothing coming from him! It was pure panic," Leslie said.
Leslie could hear the child's mother as she was watching nearby.
"His mother, I can hear her on the side screaming and crying and yelling for Kirk to save him," Leslie said. "And I just remember watching him do mouth-to-mouth and doing chest compressions and I remember it taking such a long time, it just felt like a long time for him."
Kirk acknowledges for those watching, it may have seemed like an eternity, "But it was probably about two minutes, maybe three that I'd done CPR and I started noticing—started noticing him coming around. Then I turned him on his side and see if I could expel some water."
The boy ended up being rushed to the hospital.
Now, the boy is doing fine, Leslie said.
"The takeaway is, you can't take anything for granted when you're around a pool," Kirk said. "We were being very diligent about trying to keep an eye on everybody and it just only takes a few seconds. In talking with some of the parents that were here watching it, they even said that they're CPR certified but they're like 'Kirk we froze—like we had no idea what to do'."
Fortunately, there were three people who did know what to do. News 3 presented Piper, Leslie and Kirk with a News 3 Everyday Hero, along with a $300 Visa gift card from our community partner Southern Bank.
