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StumbleUponIt was last February 16. The winter had been brutal, but that morning, forecasters had finally predicted the first thaw. Beckman had pulled a T-shirt from the back of his drawer and left his jacket home.
Looking out the car window, he marveled at the sight of the river below. The Snake is bisected by a massive waterfall, Idaho Falls, named for the surrounding town. Three months of continuous cold had frozen the falls solid. They looked like giant icicles, glinting in the morning sun.
Beckman's light mood vanished when he saw people running on the sidewalk on the right side of the bridge, pointing at the river below. He rolled down his window and heard a woman screaming.
Jumping out of his car, he bent to look over the guardrail. A white SUV had crashed upside down at the bottom of the falls. That part of the river had begun to thaw, and a woman was standing neck deep in the frigid water, holding a small child. Both were crying and screaming for help.
How in the world did they get down there? Beckman wondered. Somehow the SUV must have veered off the road and tumbled over the falls. He knew that if they weren't rescued soon, they would either freeze to death or drown. The falls are man-made, built to channel water to an electrical plant downstream. That force creates a powerful undertow, which would be almost impossible to escape once a person got sucked under.
Beckman wasn't sure how to reach the pair, but he figured he had to try. Scrambling over the guardrail, he held tight to the bottom rung and lowered himself almost seven feet to the frozen surface atop the falls. The cold penetrated his canvas skateboarding shoes. Not the best choice, he thought as he struggled to keep his footing. The surface felt solid as granite. But would it hold?
Beckman got on his hands and knees to distribute his weight more evenly. The ice seared through his jeans and turned his palms numb as he crawled closer to the edge of the falls. Looking back, he saw that a crowd had gathered on the bridge. Why isn't anybody doing something to help? he said to himself.
Fifty feet away, in a restaurant parking lot, Steven Haws was fetching tools from his truck for an electrical job. He heard the screams and dropped his tool belt to rush to the river. Haws, 47, had survived a serious car accident in his 20s and, ever since, had been quick to respond whenever he saw somebody stranded on the highway or involved in a fender bender. But a crash in the middle of the river? This was a first.
"Common sense was a little slow to kick in," he says. "Before I could think, I was out on the ice." He'd never seen the falls from this angle before—the surface had frozen into stalactites like you'd see in a cave. Now what? he thought.
Beckman joined him a few moments later. The men nodded at each other: "Let's get down there."
Holding onto deep ridges in the icicles as best they could, they used the falls as a slippery slide and coasted down on the seats of their pants. They were soaking wet and shivering when they reached the bottom, landing on a pile of ice and rocks about 20 feet from Leslie Watson and her four-year-old daughter.
The ice was thinner here. It cracked when Beckman tried to walk on it, forcing him back. "Help us!" cried the little girl.
"We're coming," shouted Beckman. "Hold on!" He could hear the current moving beneath the surface and knew that if the woman took a wrong step, she'd be gone.
"Stay there," Haws said to Beckman. Stretching his six-foot-six frame across the ice, he grabbed hold of the girl and pulled her to safety. Beckman held her close to warm her.
By this time, two police officers had crept out to the top of the falls. Stepping onto a giant rock, Beckman handed the girl up to them, then returned to help rescue the mother.
Reaching out, he and Haws each grabbed one of her arms and hoisted her out of the slushy water. They lifted her up to the waiting officers; then rescue crews used a stretcher attached to a rope pulley system to drag her across the ice and finally into the waiting ambulance.
Exhausted and cold, the two men made their way back up to the road. As rescue personnel gathered around to thank them, they were relieved to learn that the mother and daughter, while suffering from hypothermia, had only minor injuries and were going to be fine.
"Another five minutes and I don't think they'd have made it," says Haws. "That water was as cold as I've ever felt it."
Authorities believe that Watson, who suffers from mental illness, may have driven onto the river intentionally, in an attempt to commit suicide. Her lawyer says she might have had a seizure. No matter, Haws and Beckman are glad they could help give her a second chance.
"For these guys to go out across that ice with no idea whether it was thick or thin was absolutely heroic," says Police Chief J. Kent Livsey. "Had the ice broken, that would have been the end of them. They could also have been killed if they'd slipped on the falls. It's a long drop."
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