Vacationer a hero: man in Bermuda saves girl from drowning
Published: May 1, 2007
Ahmad Mahidashti of Stoughton says he and his family decided to fly to Bermuda for a weekend in the sun, but the trip turned out to be something far more than that. God put him there, Mahidashti says, and a little girl is alive because of it.
It was an idyllic evening Saturday at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel. Mahidashti was napping while his wife, Eli Cedrone, was at the pool with 11-year-old Olivia Mahidashti. They traded shifts, and Mahidashti went down to the pool with his daughter.
Mahidashti stuck his feet in the water and was sipping a margarita when Olivia pointed out a young girl swimming at the deep end of the hotel pool.
‘‘Daddy, look at that girl on the bottom swimming,’’ she told him.
Mahidashti looked up, immediately threw down his drink and dived in.
‘‘I knew she wasn’t swimming,’’ said Mahidashti, 47. ‘‘She was flat down on her face in the pool.’’
Mahidashti had been a lifeguard as a teenager in his native Iran. He brought 6-year-old Ebony Knight, a Bermuda resident, out of the water on his shoulder and rested her on his knee.
‘‘I was determined to bring her back, no questions asked,’’ he said. ‘‘I had God on my side.’’
Her face was pale - she had taken in water. A circle formed around Mahidashti and Ebony while someone called an ambulance.
For a few tense minutes, he pumped her chest and gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
‘‘She started to foam in the mouth,’’ he said - a good sign, meaning she was trying to force the water from her lungs. ‘‘I knew at that point she was going to be all right.’’
Ebony’s aunt Ruby Gibbs and some others were panicking and crying, but not 11-year-old Olivia.
‘‘It was kind of thrilling,’’ Olivia said. ‘‘It was probably like three or four minutes before she came back. Her eyes opened first and you could tell she wasn’t all with it yet.’’
It had been 30 years since Mahidashti last used his experience as a lifeguard, but the techniques came back to him and he wasn’t worried.
‘‘Don’t take her,’’ Mahidashti remembered praying. ‘‘You brought me here, let me bring her back.’’
The grateful Bermuda family offered the Stoughton tourists dinner and the hotel gave them a $200 gift certificate. The Mahidashtis declined and gave the gift certificate to the Knight family, who in turn gave the tourists a surprise sendoff at the airport Sunday.
‘‘They were very appreciative,’’ Olivia said. ‘‘They surprised us at the airport and brought cookies.’’
Mahidashti believes he was fated to take a holiday in Bermuda and destined to be sipping drinks by the pool - after all, if he finished his nap, young Ebony may not have lived, he said.
‘‘Thank God for having me there at that time,’’ he said. ‘‘If I had said ‘no, I’m tired, I’m just going to take my nap,’ then God knows what would have happened.’’
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