From the "Yay, some good news for once" files

[GalvestonDuck]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2148280


Oct. 10, 2003, 6:28AM

Sending out an SOS
Woman rescued after night in the sea, a day on an oil rig
By RICHARD STEWART
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

After Melinda Lopez fell off a shrimp boat in the rough seas of the Gulf of Mexico, she swam all night to reach an offshore oil platform, where she found a can of spray paint and wrote "SOS" on the platform's helicopter landing pad.

Along the way she fought off a large fish, found a little water in a trash can and spent a long day trying to signal to boats in the distance. Through it all, she was most frightened after a Coast Guard helicopter started flying around the platform.

"I was afraid they were going to leave me," she said in a telephone interview Thursday from her mother's home in Palacios. "I got so scared, I hyperventilated."

But the crew members of the rescue helicopter had no intention of leaving the 32-year-old shrimper. They landed on the platform's helipad, picked her up and took her to the University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital in Galveston.

"I just wanted my mom," Lopez said. "A mom knows just how to hold you."

She got that special hug at the hospital when her mother arrived to pick her up.

"I was so glad to see her," said her mother, Janie Lopez, 51. "She looked pretty bad, but I was afraid I'd never see her again."

Melinda Lopez's ordeal began about 4 p.m. Tuesday. The 65-foot shrimp boat Ike and Zack was moving from one location to another searching for shrimp. She decided to climb up onto a shelflike structure at the stern that holds some of the netting. She planned to lie in the soft netting and relax and read a Danielle Steele book, The Cottage.

On the ladder, "my shoe came off, and I slipped and fell into the water," she said. She shouted as loud as she could, but the boat puttered on. The three other crewmen, including the captain, Alfred Rocha, her boyfriend, were in the wheelhouse or down below and didn't see her. They also couldn't hear her shouts.

"The water was rough," she said. "The waves were coming over my head." Within moments, the boat -- and everything else except the angry water -- was out of her sight. She was about 70 miles south of Galveston.

She wasn't wearing a life preserver and had on only shorts and a light shirt.

"I'm a pretty good swimmer," she said. "I grew up along the coast and swam all my life." Now her life depended upon her swimming.

Darkness brought its own brand of terror. She knew only too well that her chances of rescue were slim and that there were sharks and other dangerous creatures in the water with her.

Her fear was realized when some kind of large fish started bumping into her shoulder. She couldn't tell what kind of fish it was, but it hit her hard over and over again. "I think he was just trying to see what I was," she said.

"I knocked him away, and after about 15 minutes he went away."

She eventually started hearing the bell from an offshore oil platform and swam toward the sound. "It was so hard because the current seemed to be pushing me away," she said.

After 13 long hours of swimming, treading rough water and struggling to keep above the waves, she finally reached the platform just as the first light of dawn was coming.

With her last bit of strength she pulled herself up the metal ladder to the platform. There was nobody there.

She was still cold and wet. Her lips and eyes were swelling. "I didn't realize that salt water could do that much to you," she said.

The door to a small storeroom was open, and inside she found what she needed to survive. In a trash can were water bottles with a bit of water left in them. "I was so thirsty," she said. "I was so glad to find that water."

There were some chips and beef jerky in the storeroom. "I really wasn't hungry then," she said. "I was mainly thirsty. But I didn't know how long I was going to have to be there."

She found a blanket and took off her wet clothes and wrapped herself in the warm, dry blanket.

When the others on the boat noticed she was missing, they called the Coast Guard. By Wednesday morning, several boats, a helicopter and a Coast Guard airplane were looking for her.

Once she was revived a little, Lopez decided to take action. She found some plastic garbage bags, some yellow caution tape and a can of spray paint.

She blew up some of the bags, wrote "HELP" on them and dangled them from the platform with the yellow caution tape. She wrote "SOS" on the helicopter pad in hopes that someone flying overhead would see it.

She took life vests she found on the platform and wrote messages on them and tossed them into the water. "I thought if someone found one of them floating, they'd know to come look for me."

All day long she saw boats in the distance. "I took some yellow rags, and I'd jump up and down and wave the rags, but nobody ever saw me," she said. She yelled until she was hoarse.

As the day went on, she faced the prospect of another long, dark, cold night alone in the Gulf. Then, about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, she saw a Coast Guard helicopter flying near her. A Coast Guard Falcon jet from Corpus Christi had seen her "SOS" painted on the platform, and a helicopter had come from Houston to get her.

"I was so afraid they'd go away and leave me," she said.

They didn't, of course. They had spent the day looking for her. They landed on the platform.

"They asked me who I was," she said. Within a few minutes she was back on land at the Galveston hospital. Not long after that, her mother, who had been notified by the Coast Guard, arrived to get her.

"She did a whole lot to save herself," said Chief Warrant Officer Rob Wyman. "She showed remarkable presence of mind to do what she did."

At the time of the rescue, Wyman said, Lopez was seven miles from the shrimp boat, not far from where Coast Guard officials believe she fell off the boat.

She was cold and shaking, a little dehydrated and in a slight bit of shock. She was sunburned, and her lips and eyelids were swollen, but she was otherwise in good physical shape.

Talking from her mother's home, Lopez said she has no plans to go back to the shrimp boat. "I think I'll go to Rockport and be a mother again," she said. Her three children live there with their father.

"As long as she's my daughter, she'll never go to sea again," her mother vowed.

"I don't want to even get in the water," Lopez said.

She does want one thing. When she fell overboard, Lopez lost the book she was reading. "I'm going to have to find another copy," she said. "It's a very good book."

[deb_in_nc]

I believe congratulations are in order. I'm glad she kept her wits about her. Her hearing the bell must have been a message from God to head that way.

Debbie

[opera ghost]

She does want one thing. When she fell overboard, Lopez lost the book she was reading. "I'm going to have to find another copy," she said. "It's a very good book."

You know the first thing that I thought when they mentioned she'd been going to read a book?

"Hm... I wonder if the book was out in the water with her... And if she had reading material on the oil rig...."

*shakes head* I'm so bad.