She Saw 3 Kids Fall Through Ice. No One Was Around. She Knew Their Lives Depended On Her.

DENVER, CO — From inside her Denver apartment, Dusti Talavera saw tragedy unfolding around 3:30 p.m. Sunday: Three children in a group playing on an icy pond crashed through and plunged into the icy water.

There were no adults around. If anyone was going to save the children, it was going to have to be her, the 23-year-old said Monday at a news conference,.

“Nobody was outside,” she said. “It was me. I knew it was me that had to do it.”

Officials re-created the scene at the news conference, painting a picture of an ordinary citizen who stepped in with little concern for her own safety “because,” she explained, “they were babies, and they needed help.”

“Before I even realized it,” she said, “I was out there on the middle of the pond, pulling two kids out.”

Talavera saved all three children from almost certain death.

She pulled two kids — a 4-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy — from the icy water — before the ice gave way and she fell into the 15-foot-deep pond herself. Treading water, she held an unconscious 6-year-old girl’s head above water until the child’s cousin appeared and threw her a rope.

The girl was lying on the sidewalk — unconscious, not breathing and with no pulse — when Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputies arrived. After one deputy removed the girl’s icy coat, Deputy David Rodriguez began chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She was breathing and had a pulse when she was rushed the hospital. She is expected to survive, according to CBS Denver.

“Seeing her breathe was a massive relief,” Deputy Justin Dillard said in the news conference.

The sheriff’s office and the South Metro Fire Rescue called out Talavera’s quick thinking and brave action, according to an account in The Denver Gazette.

“The fact that we had her witness these kids fall in there and her quick reaction … in putting her life at risk for the kids to make sure they could make it another day is amazing.”

Firefighter Corey Sutton, a dad himself, fought back tears as he spoke, according to The Denver Gazette.

“What she did was amazing. We were back at the fire station talking about how brave she was,” Sutton said. “I have four boys and … I hope if this happened to one of mine, that somebody like her was close by.”