By Myra Salcedo
Lifestyle EditorAround 10 a.m. Oct. 14, 1987, I was working as a lifestyle reporter, answering the newsroom telephones for absent reporters when another a reporter rushed by saying, "a baby fell down a well in someone's back yard."
I thought he must have meant a dry water well, and envisioned something that must be about 2 feet in diameter. "How deep was it? Was the baby hurt?" I asked, and was puzzled to hear that the police didn't have the answers. Everyone knows that nothing too out-of-the ordinary happens in Midland. So, I expected the whole thing would be announced as a false alarm any minute.
"They can't see the baby," the reporter said, as he went off to the site to get the story. I thought the well must be pretty deep after all, but surely the baby would be out of the well before the reporter got to the site. After all, it's rare to get to a car accident before the paramedics rescue people from mangled metal, even using the jaws of life.
Rescues seem to occur in seconds, not minutes. Little did anyone know, this would be no routine household accident. Instead, our lives would change drastically over the next few days, and an event would occur that the world would watch, riveted to television screens and radios.
It turned out that the well was actually more like a pipe, and reporters would camp out at the well sight for 24 hours, jockeying for space with other members of the media from around the country, and it would be difficult for all of us to sleep, worrying if the tiny tot would be brought out of the narrow shaft alive.
While I had an opportunity to switch with reporters and maintain a vigil at the well site, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Sitting in the newsroom I listened to a radio scanner that broadcast from the site. A microphone had been dropped into the well and I heard a tiny cherub's voice humming the notes to the song that seemed vaguely familiar. Shortly, after hearing Jessica, the newsroom was cut off from the microphone source at the site. I was later told that the song was "Winnie the Pooh." It tore my heart out.
The world was witnessing every parent's nightmare. You turn your back on a toddler, and in the blink of an eye, something terrible happens to your baby, something that could be disfiguring or fatal, and you'll spend the rest of your life blaming yourself since parents are supposed to be the protectors.
The feeling of helplessness I felt - especially after seeing an artist's rendering of a 20-foot shaft that was only 8 inches wide at the top - was terrible. Analyzing the situation as a reporter, the rescue looked impossible, especially since I had learned that the vibrations from a drilling rig caused the toddler to slip deeper into the shaft, and rescuers were drilling into solid rock.
As a mother, I couldn't stop hoping that the rescuers would bring that baby out alive. As a mother, I couldn't stand to think of that tiny child humming to herself in a dark and narrow crevice. I was almost physically ill with worry. But being in the newsroom kept me from dwelling on worse-case scenarios. The phones were all ringing as the rescue dragged on through the second day.
People from all over the world called, including radio disco jockeys and television news anchors. Callers wanted to put reporters on the air to talk about what we knew. What they didn't realize was, those of us in Midland knew little more than anyone else, especially when estimating the time rescuers would reach Jessica.
The call that really stopped me short was the one from a man who said, "Yes, you in Midland? We live on the air on Japanese radio!" We had a designated spokesmen in the newsroom, and I was happy to hand over to them the calls requesting comments.
By electing to stay in the newsroom, I missed covering the greatest single event in Midland during my 12 years as a reporter here. But I was able to tell reporters at the well site what I was learning from the television reports, progress diagrams, and professional engineers. And I had a better view of the well from watching the television then they had trying to see over the crunch of people and machinery at the site.
Plus, my gut instinct told me I didn't want to be at the scene witnessing the parents' horror firsthand. I got as close as parking my car on Tanner (the street where the well was located), but couldn't bring myself to go any further. I didn't want to be yards away if the shaft should collapse or cave in, or to see a black funeral hearse arrive, always the first indicator that all hope is gone.
The monotonous drilling seemed to drag on for days and days. When I went home on the night of Oct. 16, I began to lose faith that the rescuers would get to Jessica any time soon. Every time they thought they were close, we were told it would be a few more hours. I prayed that Jessica would be out by my birthday, Oct. 18. I was touched by pictures in our newspaper of a circle of children, holding hands and praying in a neighboring yard on Tanner.
For 58 hours no other news seemed to matter. It was difficult to write other stories as if life were going along normally in the rest of the city.
I expected Friday night would be another night of restlessness, sleeping in snatches, and getting up at odd hours to turn on the TV and see what progress had been made. Instead, Jessica was freed by 8 p.m. that night. Car horns were honking. People in the street were shouting. It was like a miracle had transpired.
Even though I hadn't been a part of the team that actually kept vigil in the backyard at 3309 Tanner Drive, I was gratified to be a part of Midland and the people who banded together emotionally and spiritually to save a child.
I didn't stand in the backyard on Tanner Drive, but I felt like I was there. And I hoped, and I prayed. And I heard that tiny voice humming in my head when sleep wouldn't come to blessedly shush it. For the rest of my life, I expect my eyes will tear up when I hear that childish song.
For the rest of my life, I expect I will hear, "Oh, you're from Midland, the Midland where they got Jessica out of the well?" Yes, I'm from that Midland, that Midland where a miracle occurred in 1987.
I didn't help the rescuers. I wasn't there at the scene. But like the millions who watched, worried and waited, my heart was there. And every year on my birthday, I am reminded of the child that was almost lost to the world, and of all the hearts she touched.