Teen rescues child moments after learning of friend's death

DENVER - Sean Simpson was celebrating the Fourth of July in Silverton on Saturday when he learned that one of his best friends from college had drowned in Chicago. So he headed away from the crowds to grieve.

He had walked for less than five minutes, up a mountainside along the Animas River, when he heard children screaming: Their friend was drowning.

Simpson sprinted down the mountain, scrambled over the rocks, jumped into the frigid, roiling river and saved the child.

"It's just mind-blowing. I'm having a hard time processing it," said Simpson, a 19-year-old resident of Durango and a junior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "I'm still trying to understand the coincidences."

Earlier in the day, his friend, Anna Schneider, had been found dead in her family's pool in Chicago. She had apparently slipped and fallen unconscious into the water. Others in a tight-knit group of friends at the University of Hawaii had not been able to reach Simpson with the news because he had been camping and had his cellphone turned off.

He learned of the death when a friend from Durango came to Silverton and told him.

He said he was reeling with the news as he headed out a dirt road for solitude. When he heard the screams and saw a bright blue shirt bobbing under the rapids, he said, he didn't have time to think. He is a kayaker and said he had no fear of jumping into the river.

The child he saved, James Wilhelm, 5, of Aztec, N.M., was camping with family nearby. No one else was close enough to hear the children's cries for help.

San Juan County Sheriff Sue Kurtz said that if Simpson hadn't been there, "this story would have had a much different ending."

Just beyond where Simpson snatched James from the water, the river takes a steep turn away from the road and down into larger rapids, she said.

Simpson said he has told his and Schneider's mutual friends about the eerie coincidence, and plans to tell Schneider's family when he attends her funeral Thursday in Chicago.

He will be able to tell them that James suffered some scrapes and bruises and ingested some water, but was reunited with his family after an ambulance crew treated him.

"We're all starting to realize that it's like a final blessing from Anna," Simpson said.