Rarely does a day go by that four strangers — Sam Harris, Maurice Rolle, Lisa Missana and Shane Mitchell — don’t think about the harrowing rescue, that one Thursday morning, around 7:45 a.m. on March 31, when they came together at the intersection of New Tampa Blvd. and Meadow Pine Dr. in West Meadows.
Each played a pivotal role. In just a few minutes time, they managed to cobble together the smarts, verve and guts to act selflessly and swiftly, to enter dark waters, to pull someone from a gray Ford Mustang that had sunk to the bottom of a retention pond. On May 4, they will be honored by the Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners.
“I don’t know about your religious beliefs or what you believe in,’’ says Sam, “but there was something happening that day.”
Four Strangers, One Goal: Rescue
Maurice was driving his 7-year-old daughter to school, over the Gateway Bridge just past Freedom High, when the gray Mustang heading in the same direction just in front of him swerved to the left and into a white brick retainer wall.
The driver of the car, Marla Zick, 26, had suffered a seizure and was no longer in control of her vehicle.
“I saw her lose control right at the top of the bridge,’’ Maurice says. “She was swerving, and when she didn’t swerve back to correct herself, I knew she was in trouble.”
The car rolled down the bridge, “scraping and grinding” against the wall the whole way, Maurice said.
“I knew it was going wrong,’’ he added. “I was just screaming, ‘No, no, no, no.’”
Sam, a New Tampa Realtor who lives in Heritage Isles, was driving west on New Tampa Blvd., a road he says he had rarely driven on before. But, that morning, he had to pick up a cake at the Publix in the New Tampa Center for a wedding party at his wife’s office at USAA, and decided to take the back way to the insurance office over the bridge.
There was nothing between his car and the one careening down the bridge towards him in the same lane.
He pulled over. The wall finally turned the Mustang loose, and it turned left. It just missed a cement light post, and a tree, before rolling between two bushes and into the retention pond at the corner of Meadow Pine Dr.
Maurice pulled over, told his daughter not to move, and tossed all of his belongings out of his pocket. Sam did the same.
After dropping his daughter off, Maurice had planned on heading into work at the 30/30 Barber Shop & Salon he owns on Busch Blvd. But, his plans changed.
“Dammit, I gotta get wet, I gotta get freaking wet,’’ he said to himself.
After a few steps into the pond, Sam decided they needed something to pull the car out with. It was 7:55 a.m. He picked up his cell phone, called 911 and ran back to his vehicle for a rope.
Deeper Waters Than Expected
Shane was taking his 7-year-old son to school, and as he drove slowly down Meadow Pine Dr. they noticed the car coming through the bushes and rolling gently into the water, where it appeared to float and drift.
A 32-year-old carpenter, Shane pulled his Nissan over and hopped out. He saw Maurice near the water. While Sam was retrieving a rope from the trunk of his car, Shane had a wincher — a motor-driven or hand-powered drum around which rope or a chain is wrapped and used to move heavy loads — on the front of his.
“I just thought we would pull the car out,’’ Shane said. “I didn’t think anyone would be going underwater.”
Maurice grabbed the hook at the end of the wincher chain and walked into the water. He was roughly 20 yards from the car, but the water was getting deeper with every step. After a few steps it was up to chest, and Maurice couldn’t see the car well enough to have an idea where he would be attaching the hook.
All Hands On Deck
Lisa was just a few minutes behind Shane on Meadow Pine Dr., on her way to drop her 14-year-old son A.J. at Family of Christ School in Tampa Palms, when she saw the car in the pond.
At first, she grabbed her phone and started taking pictures. “Oh gosh,’’ she says she told her son, “that person better get out of that car. Then, I realized Shane and Maurice were yelling at somebody in the car.”
Maurice had returned to shore, and he, Sam and Shane were coming up with another plan. But, there wasn’t time — the car began to sink.
“I could see her face, I was screaming to her that someone was coming,’’ Sam recalls. “All of the sudden, the car went to the bottom of the pond.”
“Never in a million years did I think that pond would have drank that car like that,” Maurice says.
The nose of the Mustang went first, thrusting the back end into the air, where it then slowly disappeared from sight. “Three bubbles came up, and it was gone,’’ Lisa says.
“It was total chaos.’’ Maurice says. “The electricity at the point was crazy. Everybody was just in shock. Lisa was saying something, people were screaming, stuff just went by so quick…I looked over at Shane, and he was going into the water.”
Lisa was not far behind. She ran around the pond on the other side, slipped off her flip flops and in her jeans and a black Chicago Blackhawks shirt, jumped into the pond.
For a brief minute before she jumped in, all she could think about was all the photos her friends had sent her by text over the years of the two alligators that lived in the pond.
Once in the water, Lisa swam to the car and tried to get her bearings. She placed her feet on the roof of the car to determine where she was.
The rest, she says, is kind of a blur. She remembers focusing on the driver’s side of the car. Luckily, Marla had been driving with her window down. “I always drive with my window down,’’ she later told Lisa. “Drives my mom crazy.”
This time, it saved her life.
A Few Frantic But Freeing Moments
Shane and Lisa took a few turns unsuccessfully trying to get Marla’s seat belt unclasped. Four, maybe five times each. Neither can remember exactly.
Had Shane not been getting over a cold, he says he may have been able to save Marla in one trip. He had dived for lobster and been spearfishing, free-diving 20 feet and staying under with no problem. On this day, however, maybe from the combination of his cold and adrenaline, he couldn’t seem to get a deep enough breath.
The water was green and murky, Shane says. And the car was not visible. “Shapes and shadows,’’ he says. “I was just feeling around for door handles and everything.”
Lisa came up from the water and screamed to the onlookers to find a knife or scissors, to cut the seat belt. She doesn’t remember who brought her scissors, she just remembers sticking them in her back pocket.
But before she could make another trip below, Shane emerged from the water and told her he had freed Marla from the seat belt. It was time to go pull her out.
“Let’s do this,’’ Shane said.
Together, they sank back into the water, but when they reached for Marla, she wasn’t there. Unhindered by the seat belt, she had floated to the roof of the car and towards the passenger side. Once they figured out what had happened, “Shane grabbed her by the waist, I grabbed something, and we pulled her out through the window,’’ Lisa says.
Shane and Lisa may not remember how many times they dove under, but they knew why — “I saw somebody dying,’’ Shane says.
In real time, the rescue lasted no more than two minutes, Sam says, maybe even only 90 seconds.
But, “It felt like an eternity,’’ Shane says. “I remember when I stopped to catch my breath, I was just thinking, ‘Oh my God, if I don’t get her out she is going to die. I can’t stop.’ It felt like such a long time, and I dove so many times.”
Maurice was in shock, waiting for Shane and Lisa to emerge with a body. He was ready to jump back in if he was needed, but he worried that his failed attempt to hook the wincher to the car was Marla’s best shot.
“The deal was, I was like, ‘God, please don’t let this girl die,’” Maurice says, “because I couldn’t get to her.’’
When they got her to the surface, Lisa and Shane turned Marla on her back. “She looked dead,’’ he says. “She was purple and blue and pale.”
Marla was frothing at the mouth, but was still alive. Tampa Police Department (TPD officers helped pull them to shore, and medics tended to Marla before taking her to Florida Hospital Tampa.
“We have the best police department in the nation,’’ Sam says, a sentiment shared by the others, thanks to TPD’s quick response.
Lisa and Shane slumped to the ground.
“I remember my thighs hurt so bad,’’ Lisa says.
“Absolutely spent and exhausted,’’ Shane says.
Lisa and Shane had the same thought as they looked out to the pond, to where the car had settled. Was there anybody else in there? Was a child strapped into a seat in the back? Had they done enough?
Lisa waited until the car was pulled out, to see with her own eyes. She was overwhelmed with relief when police told her the Mustang was empty.
Afterwards, Lisa would shower until there was no more hot water, drive up to school and give her son a big hug.
The Reunion…And Some Peace
A week later, the entire group — Marla, Shane, Lisa, Maurice and Sam — met for the first time since the incident, for dinner at Stonewood Grill & Tavern, located a mile or two from the scene of the accident.
It was a therapy session, of sorts. Lisa brought booklets for each person, with all the pictures she could find taken at the pond. Together, they pieced the story back together. The rush of adrenaline and the power of impulse and instinct had left many holes for all four of the rescuers.
“Dinner definitely helped everybody,’’ Sam says.
Marla did not remember anything. She told them that one minute she was driving to get a cup of coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Highwoods Preserve Pkwy., and the next minute, she woke up in a hospital.
For Maurice, dinner was closure. He had been troubled since that morning, and meeting Marla and talking with his fellow good samaritans helped clear his mind and his conscience.
“Thinking that somebody could have possibly died and you didn’t get to them that first go around,’’ he says. “That’s tough.”
The attention he received afterwards had overwhelmed Shane, an otherwise private person. But, in the darkened, comfortable confines of Stonewood, he found some peace reliving the moment. It also helped him piece together the story.
“It’s a lot to come to terms with,’’ Maurice admits.
Lisa, who still gets recognized in public, and even thanked by strangers, learns something new every day about the event. She says she is haunted by what could have been. Re-telling her story, she cries at certain parts.
“There’s a lot of ‘what-ifs,’” she says. “What if we didn’t get her out? What if she died? What if something went terribly wrong and my husband was planning a funeral and my kids didn’t have a mother? There’s just so many things.”
Lisa spent many of her summers growing up in Chicago working as a lifeguard, but never imagined she would use those skills years later. “It’s just all surreal,’’ she says. “This is something that is going to stay with me for a lifetime.”
Maurice, Shane and Lisa still drive by the pond daily, taking their kids to school, going to the grocery store, heading to and from work. In the past, Lisa might look over and see if any alligators were sunning themselves, but otherwise, no one paid it much attention.
Now it’s hard not to look and stare…and remember.
Something special happened that day.
“A spear fisherman, a former lifeguard, a barber and a real estate agent, all coming together, (each) with a role and a purpose,’’ Sam says.
“It turned out wonderful.”
