Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170172
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tim Strawn was at his usual duties, teaching young tennis students at the indoor Ridgewood Tennis Club, when someone yelled that a child had fallen over a cliff.
A wooded area behind the old McVitty Mansion courts in Salem has a steep grade for a few yards and then drops sharply toward the Roanoke River, which runs along Virginia 419.
Strawn said he knew the terrain, and was worried that it could have been one of his students who had fallen because they often wait outside until their lesson time.
He rushed out of the building and down a path, past a cave that is popular with local children. He found a backpack and a couple of coats and saw a spot where it appeared someone had slipped over the ledge.
Strawn, wearing tennis shoes and a tennis warmup suit, said he inched his way further down, looked over a ledge and saw 12-year-old Trish Arthur lying on the riverbank about 20 feet down.
"I could see blood coming out of her nose, but she was talking to me, and she wanted to get up," Strawn said Saturday evening. He told her to lie still.
When two of Arthur's fellow explorers from the Willow River Apartments worked their way to Arthur by another route, Strawn had them put their coats over the fallen girl.
Strawn, a father of two, kept conversation going with Arthur until Salem Rescue Squad members waded across the river and took the girl to Lewis-Gale Hospital.
"Then, I couldn't get back up," Strawn said. He said he got so cold before he could be rescued that if he had not been wedged against a tree, he also would have fallen to the riverbank.
Rescue workers dropped a special climbing rope to Strawn, and he used it to work his way up the bank to where squad members could help him. He had been on the bank more than an hour and a half, and he repeated, "I'm just cold. I'm just cold," as he climbed into an ambulance.
Saturday night, Strawn said he was fine, but that doctors had told him to stay wrapped up because his body's core temperature had dropped during his adventure. Trish Arthur also was fine, although badly bruised, an aunt said.
Arthur had been spending the weekend with a friend, Marinda Vess, 12, at Willow River when she joined the cave venture.
T.J. Hill said he was one of five youngsters who packed a picnic lunch and climbed the hill to explore what is called Jack's Cave. He said he and his friends have been there before and that one other time a boy fell and broke an arm.
A crowd of youngsters, accompanied by unsmiling mothers, waited in the emergency room Saturday afternoon to learn of Trish's condition.
by CNB