For Woman Stuck in Pool, Facebook to the Rescue

Ladder broke when NH woman, 61, went to get out, but she had an iPad nearby
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 20, 2017 8:11 AM CDT
For Woman Stuck in Pool, Facebook to the Rescue
A backyard swimming pool in this 2015 file photo.   (Torin Halsey/Times Record News via AP)

A New Hampshire woman who became stuck in her swimming pool after the ladder broke turned to the loving arms of Facebook to ask for help getting out. "I had one foot on (the ladder), and when I put my other foot on it, it went down. And I cracked my knee," Leslie Kahn tells WBZ-TV of the Aug. 11 incident. The 61-year-old says she didn't have the upper-body strength to hoist herself out, and "my tenants were out, nobody was home. My phone was inside."

With few other options, Kahn used a pool pole to drag the chair her iPad was on toward her and posted in a community Facebook page, asking for help. She said she labeled the post "911" to get people's attention. A woman who lived nearby showed up, followed by police and a neighbor. "Every idea we thought of didn’t work," she says, until her rescuers thought to try a step ladder. "And I just climbed out. Happily ever after at that point." Kahn, whom the AP notes is a breast cancer survivor, is apparently no worse for the wear: "People keep saying, 'I bet you can laugh about it now.' I was laughing about it then. What else can you do!" (More strange stuff stories.)

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