When Chicago Police Sgt. Alex Silva and four of his fellow policemen headed out onto the ice shelf toward the lake, they weren’t even sure a man, who had been walking his dog, had actually fallen in.
Then they saw a small, wet dog coming toward them on the ice and someone out of view shouting: “Help me! Help me.”
The dog, officers later would learn, was Pika, a 9-month-old American Eskimo puppy. The 32-year-old owner was in the lake, having jumped into waist-deep water fish her out.
Silva, talking to reporters Monday in the 20th District, estimated the water temperature was barely above freezing.
“At that temperature, you can only last so long,” Silva said. “I knew time was of the essence.”
Slipping and sliding — and occasionally breaking through the ice beneath their feet — the officers made their way to the man who was by then up to his chest in the frigid water, near Foster Beach.
Having hoisted Pika to safety, the man, who wished to remain anonymous, found himself unable to clamber up the ice and out, the officers said.
Once he was in the water and grabbed Pika, the man explained, he was stuck. There were ice walls that “rose two feet above my head stretched across the entire shore, trapping us in the water. I looked for a possible exit but could not find one. I trudged through the icy water for maybe 20 feet and came upon a portion of the ice wall that was lower.”
That’s where he was eventually pulled out.
“My hands were numb and flipper-like at this point,” the man said in a written statement police released Monday. He did manage to get his phone out (after 20 tries) and called 911, unaware a passerby had seen him go in and alerted nearby officers.
The officers formed a human chain, risking their own lives, to pull the man out — with the help of a dog leash they lowered down to him.
“He could barely walk and his hands were basically useless,” Silva said.
The man and Pika were recovering Monday.
It was, the man would explain later, Pika’s first visit to the beach; he had visited often with his previous dog.
“I’ve seen many ice formations in my nearly 7 years of visiting these beaches in the winter, but these ice walls are the tallest and most sheer I’ve ever seen,” he said, warning other dog owners to be careful and thanking his rescuers.
“They absolutely saved my life and I will be forever grateful,” the man said. “I have no doubt that I would have died without help.”
Afterward, Silva went for some well-deserved pizza and beer.
