Despite the icy, near-paralyzing waters of Yosemite’s Emerald
Pool that swirled around Jeffrey Dobbek Jr., pure adrenaline kept
the 11-year-old afloat, fighting against the weight of his father’s
limp body.
Despite the icy, near-paralyzing waters of Yosemite’s Emerald Pool that swirled around Jeffrey Dobbek Jr., pure adrenaline kept the 11-year-old afloat, fighting against the weight of his father’s limp body.
After a grueling, 1,000-foot hike up to Vernal Falls in 105-degree heat, the Gilroy resident peeled off his sweaty clothes and plunged into the 50-degree snowmelt of Emerald Pool, a shallow lake at the top of the falls known for its deep green hue. Hesitant at first, his father, Jeff Dobbek Sr., decided to give the frigid pool a shot and dove in after his son. As father and son stroked toward the opposite end of the pool, Dobbek Sr., 53, felt his body temperature plummeting and the gentle current tugging him away from the shore.
Dobbek Jr. beat his father across and scampered up the slippery bank.
“Jeffrey just kicked himself up,” Dobbek Sr. said. “But I couldn’t find a foothold. I started to panic a little bit and Jeffrey’s telling me to just kick harder. I could feel my body shutting down.”
Exhausted and lightheaded, Dobbek Sr. slipped beneath the surface.
“He was trying to pull himself up and he just fainted,” Dobbek Jr. said. “He fell into the water with his eyes wide open.”
Dobbek Jr. paused for a moment to register what just happened before jumping back into the freezing water after his father.
“I’m like, ‘What’s he doing? Did he drop something?'” Dobbek Jr. remembered. “I jumped in after a few seconds when I knew something was wrong.”
Doggy-paddling furiously and holding his father by the armpits as they drifted farther from shore, Dobbek Jr. yelled for help. Dobbek Sr. weighs 210 pounds, while his son weighs 115 pounds.
Fortunately, two off-duty lifeguards taking a dip nearby heard Dobbek Jr.’s cries for help and pulled his father ashore.
“They did one pump on his chest and he coughed up a bunch of water and came to,” Dobbek Jr. said.
Dobbek Sr. remembered his return to consciousness as a bizarre experience.
“It was completely black but the first thing I heard was myself internally moaning,” he said. “I thought, why am I moaning? This is embarrassing. Eventually the lights came back on.”
After a few minutes, Dobbek Sr. sat up, then stood and took a few steps.
“I was very, very proud of my son,” he said. “You learn a lot about the people you love under stress. I’m so happy to be alive.”
Confidant he could walk back down to the valley floor but knowing there was no way he was swimming back across the pool to retrieve his and his son’s belongings, he started walking up the hill to a bridge. But with water in his lungs and low blood pressure, nausea set in.
“That plan backfired,” he said.
A rescue crew of about a dozen carried Dobbek Sr. down to the valley on a bumpy stretcher ride where his wife, Ingrid, and 8-year-old daughter, Christina, waited. The mother-daughter pair had been on a bike ride in the valley when Ingrid Dobbek received a call from her son recounting the rescue. Then her son’s phone’s battery ran out, Ingrid Dobbek said. With the help of park rangers, mother and daughter reunited with the rest of their family in the meadows on the valley floor.
“As soon as my daughter saw her dad, she teared up,” Ingrid Dobbek said. “And my son was trying so hard not to cry. He was being oh-so-brave. He was about ready to collapse.”
When she saw her husband for the first time since the ordeal, “tears welled up in his eyes,” Ingrid Dobbek said.
“My son saved my life,” Dobbek Sr. told her.
“We are very proud of the way he responded,” Ingrid Dobbek said. “He just loves his dad so much.”
The silver lining to what could have been a tragedy is that doctors at Modesto Memorial uncovered a heart blockage that would have gone undetected if not for the accident. When doctors learned that Dobbek Sr. passed out before, not after, he slipped beneath the surface, they took X-rays of his blood vessels and implanted a stent – a tube placed inside the blood vessel to prevent an obstruction – Ingrid Dobbek said.
“This was a horrible thing to go through but the end result was so positive,” she said. “He found out about something that could have been seriously dangerous later. We are so grateful to the two lifeguards that helped my husband and everyone else who was so kind.”
Turns out, Dobbek Sr., an engineer with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, pilots his own Piper Cherokee four-seater plane and often takes his children up with him. He actually flew the plane to Mariposa for the Yosemite trip and drove into the park with his family. The plane, which usually sits at the South County Airport in San Martin, is still in Mariposa waiting for a ride home, Ingrid Dobbek said.
This weekend, Dobbek Jr., a middle school student at Oakwood Country School in Morgan Hill, will celebrate his 12th birthday with a family party and dinner at Hanami Sushi in Morgan Hill, Ingrid Dobbek said. He also wants a lizard, which probably won’t be too much to ask considering he just saved his father’s life, she laughed.
In the birthday card she wrote to her grandson, Bernice Dobbek wrote a quick note.
“You’re my hero,” the card reads. “You not only saved a human life but your own dad’s life.”
“A lot of people live their whole lives and are never able to do anything as special as that,” Bernice Dobbek said, emotion creeping into her voice. “I’m so glad my son is still here. He wouldn’t have been without Jeffrey.”
