Palmer man saves boy's life

April 19, 2005

CASEY RESSLER/Frontiersman Valley Life Editor

A Palmer man who saved the life of a drowning 2-year-old boy is being recognized as a Real Hero by the American Red Cross of Alaska.

Bill Keil, who works two weeks on, two weeks off at the Valdez terminal of the trans-Alaska pipeline, rescued the 2-year-old boy in March 2004. He pulled on his 25 years' of medical training to get the boy breathing again after the boy was pulled from the Valdez High School pool.

An unusual sequence of events led to the life-saving heroics. Keil, who works for Alyeska at the trans-Alaska pipeline terminal in Valdez, was scheduled to go to work, but after arriving, his partner showed up two hours early, affording Keil the opportunity to take a few hours off and visit with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, who were in Valdez.

"She told me, 'Daddy, I want to go swimming,'" Keil said. "I told her, 'You don't even like to swim. Let's watch a cartoon show or color. I'm tired.' She kept saying she wanted to go swimming, so we went."

Keil was in the shallow end of the pool with his daughter, when he said he heard a woman screaming. His wife said she saw a baby floating face down, and Keil jumped to action.

As lifeguards got equipment ready, Keil - a paramedic of 25 years - started giving the baby rescue breathing, and cleared vomit from the baby's airway. His pulse was extremely slow. He said things didn't look good for the boy.

"The baby was blue, and his eyes were kind of glazed over and unresponsive," Keil said. "I was thinking to myself, 'I hope the ambulance gets here fast, because the mother doesn't need to see this.' I thought they would probably load the baby and pronounce it dead at the the hospital."

Around that time, Keil said he thought someone touched him on the shoulder and said to pray for the baby. He looked over his shoulder, but nobody was there.

"I said, 'Lord, help this child.' That was it. All of a sudden, the baby took a gasp of air. I've been in law enforcement and paramedics for 25 years and I've never seen anything like it," Keil said. "I heard he was released from the hospital later that night."