Everybody hopes that in an emergency situation they will do the right thing. We all hope we’ll do what Gerry Miller did.
Miller unselfishly plunged into a raging Storey Creek to pull a girl out who had been clinging to some bushes in the freezing water, desperately trying to not be swept away as she succumbed to hypothermia. She had already lost her friend and her friend’s father whom she had been riding an ATV with. The ATV had been overcome by the raging creek and two of the riders were swept away and did not survive.
Miller was walking his dog in the Storey Creek area on Jan. 21, the day after heavy rains hit central Vancouver Island. Those rains had swollen the normally small stream into a raging torrent. Miller was taking his dog Pearl for her regular walk when, as he was striking across an area of slash, he heard someone screaming.
“I was halfway through the slash when I heard screaming from the creek,” Miller said. “I knew right away something was not right.”
He dashed to the creekside and kept yelling trying to keep up communication as he attempted, running down the trail, to locate the voice.
He came upon the girl clinging for dear life in the creek and fearlessly jumped into the water and hauled her out. He wrapped her in his coat and instructed Pearl to stay with her while he ran for help.
At a nearby house he had the homeowner call 911.
Search and Rescue volunteers arrived to find Miller with the victim. He is a hero because he acted selflessly and immediately and if he had not, there would have been three deaths that day. But such is Miller’s degree of modesty, he still to this day feels regret that he had not been there sooner and could perhaps helped the other victims.
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