Rainwater, spunk keep her alive

The 83-year-old woman's car plunges off a bridge early Saturday. She is finally found Tuesday morning.

By Compiled from Times Wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 16, 2000

FORT LAUDERDALE -- For three days, 83-year-old Tillie Tooter survived.

First, the Pembroke Pines woman survived her car's 32-foot dive off Interstate 595 Saturday morning into a dense growth of mangrove and willow trees.

Then, rescuers said, she endured three beastly hot and humid days filled with thunderstorms and four insect-infested steamy nights in the solitary confinement of her shattered Toyota. Her cell phone, a ticket out of her predicament, lay just out of reach.

For drinking, she had only the rainwater she gathered in a steering-wheel cover or that she could soak up with golf socks that she kept in the car to drape over the steering wheel to keep it cool.

"She also had one cough drop and one peppermint. She would suck on one for a little while, take it out and save it for later," trauma nurse Jeanne Eckes-Roper said.

Ingenious and then some, rescuers said. They used a fire truck ladder and a wire basket to lift the bruised and dehydrated -- but fully conscious -- Tooter out of her car to the safety of a waiting ambulance at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday.

Her ordeal over, Tooter made one last request of the sweating rescuers who rappelled over the highway wall, chain-sawed a dozen trees to cut a path through the undergrowth, and used the Jaws of Life to cut the top off her 1995 silver Tercel: "Could you please get my pocketbook for me?"

"We were glad to oblige," said Fort Lauderdale Fire Division Chief Stephen McInerny. "This lady had it all together. That may have made a difference between surviving and dying."

"It's such a relief, we're so glad they found her," Tooter's granddaughter, Lori Simms, said as the family's three-day ordeal ended. "I'm just so thankful and relieved she's alive."

McInerny said Tooter was extremely sharp in responding to questions from medics.

"She knew her date of birth, her address and what flight her granddaughter was expected on," he said.

A night owl who often played cards well into the evening, Tooter had been heading to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to pick up Simms, her granddaughter, early Saturday.

McInerny said the first thing she told her rescuers was, " "I'm very thirsty.' She was covered with red ant and mosquito bites and said she slept very little and she apparently hadn't."

Tooter was taken to Broward General Medical Center. She suffered bruises but no broken bones. She was in serious condition Tuesday and will be kept at the hospital for several days, but doctors expect her to make a full recovery.

The Florida Highway Patrol said it wasn't Tooter's fault she went over the wall on her way to the airport.

"She was definitely struck by some vehicle in the left rear," said Lt. John Bagnardi, an FHP spokesman. "The back of her car had a lot of damage."

Bagnardi said, "She doesn't know if it was a truck or a car, but that she was tagged in the rear. Her car climbed the wall and rode it for 30 to 40 feet. It teetered for a moment, then went over tumbling end over end, landing on the driver's side facing west.

"The trees cushioned the fall and her seat belt kept her from being thrown around," he said. "That's why she survived."

The trees then kept her car suspended inches above a snake- and alligator-infested swamp, saving Tooter from the reptiles and from possibly drowning.

There are no leads on the other driver, Bagnardi said.

The case of the missing grandmother began about 2 a.m. Saturday when a Continental Airlines plane carrying Tooter's granddaughter, Lori Simms, and Simms' boyfriend, Steven Poulos, arrived at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, 31/2 hours late from Newark, N.J.

Simms called her grandmother to say they would rent a car or catch a cab and head to her Pembroke Pines condominium, about 10 miles away.

"She said "Don't be silly. I'm awake. I'll come get you,' " Simms said.

A security camera filmed Tooter leaving her condo at 2:54 a.m. to drive to the Fort Lauderdale airport.

She never arrived.

Worried, Simms and Poulos rented a car and drove to her condo. Tooter wasn't there. They called the police.

The next time someone saw Tillie Tooter was about 9 a.m. Tuesday, when 15-year-old Justin Vannelli was collecting trash on the bridge. His father's company has a state contract to clean up road debris. He was collecting a bumper when he noticed some of the trees below were mangled. He looked down and saw Tooter's car.

"I saw the car first, then saw her legs sticking out. I told my dad to call an ambulance," Justin said.

His father, Chuck, of Delray Beach, called 911.

"It went over the top of the bridge wall. I see a lady down inside moving. The car went straight down," Chuck Vannelli told the dispatcher.

Four minutes later, Fort Lauderdale firefighters began to arrive.

"We put three medics over the wall immediately," McInerny said. When Lt. Mike Hicks made contact with her, they said, "She's conscious. She's talking to us and this is the missing woman from Pembroke Pines."

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, the shiny metallic steering wheel cover Tooter had used to collect water was still sticking out of Hicks' pocket.

But Hicks and his colleagues said Tooter did the hardest work of all. She stayed alive.

Hicks led a team of seven rescue workers who found Tooter sprawled in the back seat, her legs propped over the steering wheel and stretched out over a crumpled front seat.

They worked in the swamp between the two lanes of the interstate, their boots sucked into the 8-inch-deep ooze. Steam billowed out of the mud and standing water.

Bugs were everywhere.

"This kind of thing, you don't have time to think about it," McInerny said. "It's got to be done now."

As rescue workers labored to cut open the crumpled car, they kept Tooter talking.

"The first thing she said to me was, "Can you get me out of here?' " said David Bourgouin, another firefighter and paramedic.

McInerny said the whole rescue took 64 minutes.

"I personally have been at accidents where there were none of these obstacles, and it's taken longer," he said. "This is one of the most dramatic rescues we've had since our department was founded in 1912."

Dr. Moshe Stav, a Broward General Medical Center trauma surgeon, who treated Tooter said her will to survive, despite a history of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, made the difference.

"The will to live, the will to fight are different in every person," Stav said. "Age itself is a minor factor, but not the only factor. She survived because she wanted to survive, because she was smart, and because she got a little bit of water."

- Information from the Sun-Sentinel and Associated Press was used in this report.

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