Little girl is a big hero
Published: March 6, 2007
For a 9-year-old, Melyssa-Kate “Missy” Kowalski hasn’t had it easy. She’s already had two open-heart surgeries, and stands only 41 inches tall and weighs 43 pounds.
But when it was time to rescue her 84-year-old neighbor Kathleen Slattery, Slattery says no firefighter or police officer could have done better.
Missy’s small stature helped her squeeze inside a window in Slattery’s apartment after Slattery fell and spent about 15 hours on the floor.
“She said ‘I fell down,’ ” Missy said Monday. “I said, ‘Don’t worry, Kathleen, I’m in here, I’m getting help.’ ”
Rescue ‘like a real movie’
Missy was wearing a 24-hour heart monitor just the day before the rescue, her mother said. She was born with multiple holes in her heart, said her cardiologist, Dr. David Wax of Children’s Memorial Hospital.
“She was so happy to help me,” Slattery said Monday in a phone call from her hospital bed. “They came in and they took me off the floor, and the Fire Department took me over here in an ambulance. . . . It was a little bit scary.”
Slattery was in fair condition at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
Missy said her rescue mission “was like a real movie. That’s what I felt like. It felt like I was an agent sneaking into a house. It was really cool.”
Missy, a second-grader at St. Benedict’s School at Irving and Leavitt, said she had to help Slattery, whom she calls “my aunt.”
“She fell down in the middle of the night, from the middle of the night all the way through,” Missy said. “I’m scared of the dark, but that time I wasn’t.”
Slattery, of the 1300 block of West Byron, didn’t answer her phone when her niece Mary Siwak, a retired police officer, called to check on her Saturday afternoon. The fiercely independent Slattery wants to live on her own as long as she can, so Siwak and her sister, Patty, call and visit often.
Siwak called Missy’s mother, Debbie Gordils, Slattery’s upstairs neighbor.
“My dad got out the butter knife, and my mom said, ‘Get your boots on, girls,’ ” Missy said. She and her sister Petra, 5, like to drop in on Slattery, a former teacher who treats them to lollipops.
They tried Slattery’s door, but it was locked from inside. They heard her shouting that she had fallen.
“She has huge bruises,” Siwak said. “She took a real good fall.”
“I was in shock,” Slattery said. “I was very thirsty. I didn’t sleep. I had no energy to kneel on the floor to get myself up. I couldn’t get to the telephone.”
Missy’s dad, Richard Kowalski, used the butter knife to pry a window open.
Missy, who is smaller than her 5-year-old sister, slipped in.
Missy comforted Slattery and unlocked the door to let the adults inside.
“She was so elated that she was able to help me,” Slattery said. “Her eyes were sparkling and she was happy.
“I thanked her,” Slattery said. “It would be a good story to make children proud of what they can do.”
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