It’s every parent’s worst nightmare — their child getting lost while swimming. But one Colorado man, who’s both a plumber and a dad, was hailed a hero after a very lucky coincidence.

Angelo Mondragon was enjoying a day at the lake with his family.

Then the happy day turned deadly. As Mondragon splashed with his children, something brushed up against him.

“It felt like something you normally wouldn’t feel in the water,” he said. “I did sort of a back kick to bring up whatever it was, and then I saw the bottom of a baby’s foot float up.”

To his shock, Mondragon found himself looking at the foot of a small child.

Instinctively, he reeled the child in. He didn’t know who she was or whether she was even still alive.

Mondragon chalks his reaction up to parenting instincts.

“I saw just the bottom of her feet and then right then at that moment, that became my child,” he said. “I reached in and I pulled her out like I would any of my babies.”

The little girl was only 3 years old.

She wasn’t breathing. Mondragon immediately rushed her to the shore and began to yell for help. Two nearby beachgoers, who happened to be nurses, started performing CPR on the girl while others called 911.

“I grabbed her and carried her limp body to the shore,” said Mondragon. “The girl was already blue. She wasn’t breathing.”

While Windsor Lake is often crowded with beachgoers, there are no lifeguards.

The little girl was not wearing a life preserver. In the flurry of activity in the water, she’d slipped below the surface. It was sheer luck that she happened to brush against Mondragon.

She was rushed to Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

There, she identified as 3-year-old Sitlali Fernandez and given emergency medical treatment

Unbelievably, Sitlali not only survived but also recovered very quickly. After a day in the hospital, doctors pronounced that she was in good condition. A mere three days later, she was back to jumping on the trampoline with her siblings.

But it could’ve been very different.

“If I was not in that right spot at the right time, it could have been a search and rescue mission,” Mondragon said. “As I told the little girl’s mom, when I saw the baby’s toes that became my baby.”

That’s not to say that Sitlali didn’t sustain any injuries during her time in the lake.

She had hypothermia and had retained fluid in her lungs. Originally, she was taken to the Medical Center of the Rockies but then transferred to Children’s Hospital where doctors could assess her for brain damage. No one could say for certain how long she’d been deprived of oxygen.

But thankfully, Sitlali managed to make a full recovery. Mondragon even visited her in the hospital. Her mother, meanwhile, had a very important message for him.

“There’s no words how much I can thank you,” Emma Hernandez told him. [sic] “You saved her. You saved her. You saved my baby.”

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Source: Shareably, YouTube