<< Previous   of   Next >> Enterprise/CHRIS GOODENOW  (click to enlarge) Brothers Tristan (from left), 16, and Aiden Doyle, 13, of Edmonds, and their uncle Sandor Fogassy, 14, of Seattle, discuss their recent rescue of a man who had fallen from the site of a damaged bridge.

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CONTACT THE ENTERPRISE Jocelyn Robinson, Copy editor jrobinson@heraldnet.com

Teens rescue man who fell off bridge

• Boy Scouts receive heroism awards for actions

By Chris Fyall
Enterprise editor

It was a dark and rainy Saturday night last December when two Edmonds teenagers and their 14-year-old uncle used a long length of rope, an 8-foot ladder, and their Boy Scout wits to save a drunken man who'd fallen off a two-lane bridge near their Grays Harbor county cabin.

The situation was dire. There was no power at the cabin, no phone lines, and only the crumbling bridge standing shakily above rising flood waters.

No bother.

"We were bored at the cabin. It had been raining all the time. There was nothing to do," said Sandor Fogassy, whose mother Julia Fogassy is the grandmother of Edmonds' Tristan Doyle, 16, and his younger brother Aiden, 13.

"It was actually kind of fun," Tristan said.

It was also, not surprisingly, actually kind of dangerous.

The three teenagers were recognized earlier this month with Boy Scouts Lifesaving Action Awards at the Cascade District Awards Night in Bellevue.

Tristan, who was lowered by rope from the bridge to the man 20 feet below, won a silver Heroism medal.

Sandor and Aiden won bronze Heroism awards.

During December's floods, strong winds and rising flood waters started a storm that would swamp Western Washington. Logs clogged the western fork of the Satsop River, by which the Fogassy family cabin sits.

That day, the two-lane bridge outside the cabin started to crack, crumbling slowly and sinking into the river.

Julia forbid the boys from going on the bridge. The boys decided to hand-paint "Bridge Out" signs, and spent the day turning cars around.

When a truck loaded with three drunk people drove up at 10 p.m., though, the boys had already gone inside. After a few minutes of watching from inside the truck's headlights idly illuminate the darkness, the boys went to investigate.

They found that one of the men had fallen off the end of the bridge, which by then had completely collapsed. The man landed on the collapsed rubble, but the raging river raced nearby. The car's other occupants were much too drunk to do anything about it.

Sandor raced back to the cabin and grabbed rope. Tristan dashed back to grab a ladder.

Then, without consulting Julia, they lowered Tristan over the side of the bridge, where he helped secure the fallen man to the rope. The boys hauled him up. Then they extracted Tristan.

"I am really proud. I was also really scared," Julia said. "They were completely willing, without care for themselves, to do whatever it was that needed to be done."

Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com