Today, he’s alive. How?
You could say prayers. There were many said along the beach Friday as his body bobbed limply just below the ocean’s surface.
But there also was a team of volunteer rescuers, the medics who performed CPR well after all seemed lost, and another 12-year-old who risked her own life to help him before anyone else could.
And there was the ocean itself. At 56 degrees, the water was cold enough that it might have bought rescuers a little time.
The boy has spoken a few words since his ordeal and was moved out of intensive care Wednesday. It’s unclear whether he’ll fully recover, but his parents, Chad and Kirsten, have hope.
“There’s been several miracles just in the circumstances of finding him, the fact that he’s not dead, the fact that he can move, the fact that he can speak,” Chad Ostrander said. “Unbelievable.”
Dale was visiting the coast with members of his youth group from Bethel Baptist Church when the ocean’s strong currents pulled him and another boy far from shore. They were just wading, not swimming, his father said.
“A riptide hit them, kind of knocked them off their feet,” said Shanon Kissel, a sawmill worker who was boogie boarding in a shallow area nearby with his daughter, Nicole.
Nicole took off after Dale on her boogie board, even though her father was yelling that she was going into a dangerous area.
“She didn’t hear me,” Kissel said. “She just kept going after Dale.”
The boy, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and pants, struggled onto Nicole’s 3-foot boogie-board. The pair paddled ferociously toward shore as the rip current pulled them even farther from it.
Nicole said Dale told her, “Keep paddling. We’re almost there.”
“He told me his name, how old he was,” she said. “I said a bad word and he said, ‘God doesn’t like that.’ ”
Shanon Kissel said he reached the other boy – who was not identified – and pulled him onto his own board. He yelled at bystanders to call 911 and went to call for help himself.
When Kissel got back in the water he saw Nicole and Dale clinging to her board, turned sideways in rolling waves about 150 feet beyond the crashing surf. He was swimming out to the children when a wave knocked the pair off her board.
“She turns around to face him like she’s gonna go back after him,” Kissel said. “I had to tell her to get back on the board.”
She did, but Ostrander had disappeared.
Fire officials and other rescuers arrived. Some stood atop trucks, using binoculars to try to spot the boy. Members of the church group cried and prayed, kneeling in the sand.
Eddie Mendez, a volunteer water rescuer, was working his day job at a construction site when the emergency call came in. The 34-year-old immediately drove over to the beach and changed into a wet suit while his colleague launched two jet skis.
Mendez said he saw a shadow moving under the breaking water offshore, so he and a diver rushed over. They scanned the area for a few minutes before Mendez spotted the shadow again.
They found the boy floating about 2 feet below the surface of the water.
“He was white-pale and face down,” Mendez said.
As they pulled the boy on board, Mendez realized he was rescuing a child – about the age of his own daughter.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is like my own child,’ ” Mendez said.
Mendez drove the boy to the beach, where emergency responders began trying to revive him. There was no sign of life, but they kept performing CPR as they transported him.
Finally, after Dale reached a hospital, his pulse returned.
Then Dale was flown to OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. His parents were still steeling themselves for the worst.
“I expected to say our goodbyes and so did my wife, and we were just prepared for that,” Chad Ostrander said.
But on Sunday night, as he was eased off sedatives, Dale opened his eyes.
“At that moment, that was the first glimmer of any hope,” his father said. “It didn’t mean he was going to make it. It just meant that there was hope.”
Dale starting talking Monday. When his parents encouraged him to cough to clear his throat, he replied, “I don’t have to.”
Dale has uttered a few more words. Ostrander said that when he told him he couldn’t get out of bed, “He reared up and said, ‘Yes, I can.’ ”
Two more words came Wednesday, when Nicole Kissel visited him. She said he seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes for most of the 15-minute reunion.
But as she left, he made eye contact for the first time and said, “Thank you.”
