The Lost Child

It was a bright, peaceful California afternoon in San Marino, and the children raced each other across the lot--little Kathy Fiscus, 3, her sister Barbara, 9, and her cousin Gus Lyon, 5. Kathy fell behind. When the children looked back for her, she had vanished. Gus heard faint screams. Following the sound, he came to an open hole in a clump of weeds. The hole was only 14 inches across, and the pipe that lined it was rusted and corroded. Kathy had fallen into an abandoned and forgotten water well.

The frightened children ran to tell Mrs. Fiscus. Trying to pierce the darkness of the well, Kathy's mother called: "Are you all right, honey?" Faintly, from the dark hole, Kathy's voice quavered: "Yes."

The Rope Went Slack. Down the dark opening, her mother heard Kathy crying, tried to find out her position. "Kathy, Kathy, is your head up?" she called. "Yes, it is," Kathy sobbed. "Is your head down?" her mother asked. "Yes, it is," came Kathy's voice, thin and frightened. Then there was only the dismayed crying of a child beginning to realize that her mother was not going to make everything all right.

Policemen came and lowered a rope. They hoped to slip it over Kathy's head and shoulders. They pulled gently, felt it tighten, then catch. They stopped, afraid that the noose might have caught around her neck. There was no longer any sound at all from the well.

The Pit & the Shaft. Around that narrow hole, a community rallied to the first radio call for help, and a nation anxiously waited for word of the lost child. Drills, derricks, bulldozers and trucks were rushed to the lot from a dozen towns. Three giant cranes lumbered through Los Angeles behind police escort. Firemen ran an air hose down the well, began pumping air down by a rotary pump. A little more than an hour after Kathy's fall, a power-drill crew began to sink a shaft alongside the abandoned well. On the other side, big clamshell shovels clawed an open pit for exploration. Fifty floodlights were rushed from Hollywood studios. Volunteer workers--engineers, sandhogs, retired miners, cesspool diggers--rushed to help.

By midnight, the shaft was down 41 feet; by 4 a.m., down 65 feet. Then the drilling stopped; the shaking of the drill might cave in the sandy California soil in the bigger pit. As dawn broke hot and clear over the San Gabriel Mountains, the snorting, clangorous power shovels had dug a pit 57 feet deep. "Whitey" Blickensderfer, 43, an unemployed ex-sandhog, was lowered into the crater with a partner--little, gnomelike O. A. Kelly, an out-of-work carpenter and ex-miner. By midmorning, they had tunneled to the well pipe, cut a small exploratory window in its corroded sides. Peering in with mirrors and flashlights, they saw a flash of pink 40 feet below at a bend in the old well pipe. There was no movement.

They decided not to dig any further in the open excavation, and concentrated instead on the narrow shaft. All that hot, still afternoon, the big drill ground away. The shaft had to be lined by 24-in. casing, to prevent a cave-in. It was Saturday, and all afternoon the crowds thickened. By midnight, 12,000 were standing in the chilly spring night--grave, subdued neighbors, sightseers and dating teenagers, men & women in evening dress. In a car a little back from the scene, David Fiscus and his wife sat out their vigil. To sympathetic queries, he said wearily: "Let's not discuss it, please don't."

David Fiscus was district superintendent of the California Water & Telephone Co., which had drilled the well in 1903. He had just returned from testifying before the state legislature for an anti-pollution measure that would require the cementing of all old wells.

Digging by Hand. The drill ran into trouble just short of the 100-ft. mark. In relays, men were lowered by a hoisting bucket to dig the rest of the way by hand. It was grueling work. Dirt and rocks as big as a man's head had to be hoisted up bucket by bucket. Burly Bill Yancey, a 38-year-old sewerage contractor who had been on a wartime underwater demolition team, dug for two hours and 20 minutes before he was hauled out.

"Americans sure are funny people," said one of the workmen. "They'll cut each other's throat for a nickel, but when one of them gets in trouble, they'll sure get out and swamp for him." No one thought of pay. "I haven't heard the word mentioned," growled Raymond Hill, the city engineer who directed the operations.

"Only a Couple of Hours." All over the nation, citizens swamped newspapers with requests for the latest report on "the little girl." Midgets, jockeys and schoolboys volunteered to go down the well pipe after Kathy. David Fiscus refused. The danger of their becoming wedged or badly cut in the well casing was too great.

Again & again, the word would come from somewhere: "Only a couple of hours more now." Again & again, there were fresh delays: Tempers were short; arguments flared over what might have been done. At last diggers, deep in the shaft, began to tunnel laterally toward Kathy's iron prison. Whitey was only a few shovelfuls away from the well pipe, when he was hauled to the surface, his face angry and set. There was water in his boots. Slowly at first, then faster, water poured into the tunnel. Digging stopped.

It was three hours before the shaft could be pumped dry. Whitey went back down. "He deserves a knighthood," said a worker, "but he doesn't even have a job." Others relieved him. The lateral tunnel began to cave in. The low talk of the workmen was carried over the loudspeaker. "It's caving to beat the band," said the voice below. Timbers went down for shoring. The men worked on, regardless of danger, or bone-deep fatigue. Little O. A. Kelly leaned back wearily when he was pulled to the surface, and swore: "I'm going in there and I'm coming out with that little girl in my arms."

Cutting the Pipe. Nearly 48 hours after Kathy's fall, the lateral tunnel reached the well pipe. But rescue was hours away. Drill after drill broke. Doggedly, the workmen tried a pneumatic saw. Over the loudspeaker, the screech of their drilling sawed like a file on taut nerves. Finally at 6 o'clock Sunday night they asked that the microphones be turned off. There was a paralyzed wait that dragged on to two hours.

Then, in the glare of the television lights, a doctor stepped into the bucket and was lowered into the shaft. A few minutes later, the announcement came at last over the loudspeaker: "Kathy is dead and apparently has been dead since she was last heard speaking." Kathy's body had been found just below the tunneled opening. Her knees were wedged against her chest. Kathy had fallen into a coma, and then died because her cramped body could not get enough oxygen. There was no pain in her face.

The doctor asked the crowd to leave. As the last figures disappeared, Bill Yancey was hauled slowly up the shaft. In his arms was a small, blanketed form. Tenderly he laid the bundle on a white pillow in the back of a black car. In silence, the car rolled slowly past the derricks and the piled dirt, past the gaping hole and the steel casing, past the rows of exhausted, grimy workmen.

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