‘You guys are my angels': Iowa man meets first responders who pulled him from pond after seizure

As Macy Kennedy walked the hallways of Mercy Medical Center on Monday, she wondered if her dad was dead. 

She'd learned that Michael Kennedy had a seizure while driving, sending his sedan into an icy Urbandale pond earlier that day.  

"I didn't know what to expect," the 16-year-old said. "I didn’t know if there was gonna be brain damage, if he was gonna be paralyzed.

"I know he had epilepsy, but ... It was just really hard going down there because even as I walked into the hospital, I didn’t know if I was gonna see my dad alive or dead."

Thanks to Michael's impressive absent-minded self-preservation and the determination of Urbandale emergency responders, the 45-year-old father survived his plunge into a pond. On Thursday, Michael, Macy and several other family members met with those emergency responders to express their gratitude. 

"You don’t even know how many people go into this process and it’s crazy to think how many people care about one person’s life," Macy said, her voice at times splintering as she talked about the ordeal. 

“Everything you’re telling me is news to me," Michael Kennedy said to more than a dozen police officers, firefighter and EMTs who were explaining how they helped save his life. He had lost consciousness during the accident and doesn't remember leaving the road or getting out of his car.

Before the medical emergency, Kennedy was following a routine he had ridden for years. He was using his lunch break at his job at Berkley Technology Services in Urbandale to go work out nearby.

But at some point while he was riding down 109th Street, he began seizing and drove his car about a hundred yards astray into the water. It was just 22 degrees that day and pond gets as deep as 8 feet. 

"I took a left to head up the road and the next thing I remember I was waking up in the ambulance," he said. 

Urbandale police Sgt. Mark Jorgensen was able to fill in some of the blanks.

When he'd responded to the call of a car in the water, he saw witnesses pulling on the trunk of Michael's four-door vehicle, trying to prevent it from sliding deeper into the water. The front end was completely submerged while some of the rear window and seats, along with the trunk, were barely above water. Jorgensen immediately jumped into the frigid water wearing nothing but his uniform.

He broke a window and attempted to pull Kennedy from the vehicle, but in his mental haze, the epileptic man held on to his steering wheel. Jorgensen then asked one of the witnesses if they could tow the man to shore. He said Michael had about 3 inches of breathing room in the car. The rest of it was full of water.

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"When I saw (him) I thought ‘You are not drowning on me today,’" Jorgensen said. "If the car went under, I was gonna get in it. I didn’t know if I’d get back out, but I was not gonna watch somebody drown. I can’t put that on my plate." 

A witness with a truck brought a rope down to try to connect to Kennedy's car. But the 14-year Urbandale police vet couldn't get the rope to latch. 

“I went back up to the front and I think the car actually sank a little more and he crawled to the back seat and I said ‘Lay back I’m gonna pull you out,’" Jorgensen explained. "I started pulling him out the window and he again fought and climbed to the other side of the car."

Kennedy was alert enough to find a pocket of air, but he was not cognizant enough to let Jorgensen help him. So the 49-year-old tried to hook the tow again.

“I couldn't get it, it was underwater while I was trying to do it. And the next thing I know, I couldn't feel my arms and legs," he said. "It’s just like they turned into dead weight.”

While the main fear was drowning, the possibility of Michael suffering from hypothermia lingered. But that wasn't a problem for the firemen there to relieve Jorgensen, who actually called an ambulance after being in the water for so long. 

Kyle Clark and Andrew Klenk — a couple of young Urbandale firefighters wearing waterproof gear meant to protect against the cold — waded into the chest-deep water and removed Kennedy from the car. 

“As soon as I opened the door, he was right there (on the passenger side)," Klenk said. "He was completely out of it, eyes were open, he didn’t know where he was, couldn’t talk to me. At that point, I just yanked him out.”

They brought him to shore where EMTs took over. 

The fact that there was a live body to take to the shore was a bit surprising, considering the man had suffered a seizure and was in a submerged car for more than five minutes. 

"Our first thought (when we arrived) is 'he’s still in his seatbelt in the front seat, the front seat is under the water and a good outcome is not usually the case in that situation,'” said Klenk, 26.

He was thankful that the medical emergency did not rob Kennedy of his survival instincts. 

"If that wouldn’t have been the case, he would have been completely underwater. And by that time, it would have been several minutes," he said. "So the likelihood of making it out alive, making a full recovery, you know, without some sort of deficit is very unlikely."

Kennedy is thankful, too, of course. He said his ankle is a bit sore and he has some new medication for his epilepsy, but he's glad to be back home and to be there for his fiancee, two daughters and four stepchildren. 

"There’s nothing that you can say or do that can express thanks for your life," he said. “This time of the year, it’s the holidays and you think of the movie 'It’s A Wonderful Life.' It’s very similar in some ways; a guy goes into the water, near freezes and some angels come and you guys are my angels."

Thanks to those "angels," Macy Kennedy and the rest of her siblings have another holiday season with their father. 

Follow the Register on Facebook and Twitter for more news. Tyler Davis can be contacted at tjdavis@dmreg.com or on Twitter @TDavisDMR.