Firefighter rescues neighbor from lake, helps him home

LAKEWOOD — Matt Keller and Larry Jackson live just a few doors down from each other on Lake Ki.

From Keller’s house, he can see his neighbors’ border collies play with tennis balls in the water.

Still, the men had never met, never shaken hands, before Jan. 20. That was when Keller saved Jackson’s life.

It was one of those days when the water is flat and shadows fall, creating a double-image reflection on the 97-acre lake. Jackson was in a 12-foot aluminum boat, looking for a missing dock.

The day before, his family noticed it had floated off. Larry Jackson, 68, and daughter Shelbey, 23, went looking. It grew dark, so he went out alone the next day.

His wife, Sheryl, doesn’t hesitate to remind him she’d warned against that.

The boat battery was draining, so Jackson started to row.

About that time, Keller, 48, arrived home from a bicycle ride. From his downstairs window, Keller saw his neighbor in the boat. He headed upstairs to change out of his cycling clothes.

Meanwhile, Jackson stood up in the boat to move seats. When he started to sit again, “the front end went straight up and the corner went down in the water and that was the point of no return,” he said.

He clung to the capsized vessel, debating whether to try to swim 100 feet to shore.

Keller looked out his bedroom window.

“I looked down and the boat was under water, essentially,” he later told Jackson. “I could just see your head.”

Keller is a battalion chief for the Everett Fire Department, a 23-year firefighter who trains on water rescues every year.

He ran downstairs to a storage room and grabbed two life jackets, a rope and a paddle. He could hear Jackson calling for help. Keller yelled back.

Most of the Kellers’ water toys were put up for the season, so he used a wooden kayak he and his wife, Colleen, had built from a kit.

“It was the worst vessel I could pick, but it was the only thing I had available,” he said.

Keller paddled out and tossed the rope and a life jacket to Jackson, who pulled it on halfway and upside down. Keller started paddling backward toward shore.

He asked Jackson where he was from. Jackson said they were headed that way.

At the dock outside his house, Jackson stood on the bottom rung of the ladder, unable to pull himself up. It felt like the cold had switched off his muscles, he said. He estimates he was in the water 20 minutes.

Keller beached the kayak and grabbed Jackson’s leg. He “spun me around like I weighed 20 pounds,” getting him onto the dock, Jackson said.

“I was still coherent,” he said. “(Keller) said the best thing was I didn’t panic.”

Jackson was having trouble standing. Keller used a “fireman lift” to help Jackson walk into his house.

During the rescue, Keller noticed his neighbor wasn’t shivering. From his training, he knew that was a symptom of severe hypothermia. He hurried Jackson into the shower.

The next day, the Jacksons brought Keller homemade peanut butter cookies and a thank-you note.

“Words can’t express the appreciation I have for the kindness you showed for me on Tues.,” it read. “You are my true guardian angel. Thank you, thank you, for the help. You saved my life!!”

Keller stopped by their house again Jan. 28. He and Larry Jackson hugged.

“Good seeing you buddy,” Keller said.

“Are you the fireman?” Jackson’s daughter, Shelbey, asked him in the kitchen. “Thank goodness.”

It was the same kitchen where Sheryl first met the man who rescued her husband.

“It must have been weird for you,” Keller said. “I just came marching in here. I didn’t pause. I was like, ‘I’m Matt. We’re going to the shower.’ ”

He had asked her if Larry liked coffee, tea or hot cocoa — and whatever it was, to get a pot going.

“We can laugh about it now,” Larry Jackson said. “It took my hands the longest to come back. I didn’t turn the water on very hot, because the cold water felt like the hot water on my hands.”

Since then, Keller’s wife also has reminded him he should have called 911. It just happened so fast, the firefighter said. He can’t believe he missed that crucial step.

In the days since the rescue, the two families got to talking. They found they had mutual friends, that their circles overlapped.

Sheryl’s grandparents, the Freestads, built the first house on Lake Ki, west of Smokey Point, in the 1940s, she said. It’s a place where people still refer to neighbors as “the jeweler” or “the FAA guy,” where smoke from the chimneys floats across the water at sunset, and the same Canada geese return every year in pairs.

Keller met Sheryl Jackson’s father while building his house on the lake.

Robert Freestad, who died in 2007, was known as “the mayor of Lake Ki.” Sheryl Jackson and her daughter both grew up on the lake. It’s easy to grow complacent about the water’s dangers, she said.

In the meantime, Larry Jackson has been thinking about what he has left to do in life.

He’s taken his daughter fishing and crabbing since she was small. They have more trips to take.

He’s also the driver when the family travels to horse shows. Shelbey, who recently graduated college, just got a new quarterhorse.

Shelbey wasn’t surprised that her dad, a retired railroad worker, kept his cool when his boat capsized. He’s always calm, she said, except for at her horse shows.

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.