Woman at party learned a guest's toddler had gone missing—she saved his life by running into a house with a pool
Parents must constantly be aware of their children's safety, especially infants and toddlers. Even a minute unattended can lead to disaster. A woman named Barbara Ribeiro received this stark reminder along with several other parents after attending a party in 1961, per 11 Alive. When she noticed that 21-month-old Ben Cowell was missing, she immediately followed her gut feeling and sprang to action to save the toddler’s life. Decades later, at 94, she was overjoyed to reunite with the child she rescued.
Recalling the incident, Cowell mentioned that he had wandered away from the party. “Maybe a block,” he said. His parents panicked when they noticed their son missing and frantically began to look for him. Along with them, several others, including Ribeiro, began their search too. The woman specifically recalled looking at a home that had a pool down the neighborhood. Despite several homes on the block, the woman somehow landed at the one where the boy was. “Yes, like I said, it was a mystery what prompted me to go where I did go," she remarked. Right enough, she was stunned to see little Cowell at the bottom of the pool.
Unbeknownst to all, the then-toddler had walked to the house and ended up right into the pool. "Scary, frightening," she remarked. Ben added, "Yeah, the only thing that I had ever heard someone say—I think it was my mom telling me that when you guys found me, there weren’t any bubbles coming up. So no one knew how long I had been down there.” Ribeiro immediately jumped in and got the boy out and performed CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to revive him. While the now-grown Cowell doesn’t have much recollection of what happened, he can only imagine how things would have turned out at the party had Ribeiro not saved his life.
"When I really think of it, I think of the hand of God. He made sure that I made it for some reason,” he said. As a father of two kids, he is “blessed” to have been found, survived and lived. Cowell’s family moved after the incident and Ribeiro never got a chance to stay in touch. The woman made the front page of the newspapers for her instinct and courage to locate and rescue the boy. After 64 years, she finally met the boy, now a grown man and father. "I'm a little bit nervous. I’m a crybaby,” the now 94-year-old noted moments before she could meet Cowell.
"Hello, hello, young man,” Ribeiro remarked as she saw the all-grown-up man in front of her eyes. "It's nice to see you," said Ben. What followed was a heartfelt embrace and a conversation about the incident. "Thank you so much for going to look for me. I am glad it turned out the way it did,” he said. No one knows what it was that pushed Ribeiro to that house that day but it gave life in abundance in the most heartwarming way.