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Webley honored for coming to the rescue
Christine Pratt/Wenatchee World
Wenatchee firefighter Clint Webley receives the Good Citizen Award last Thursday from the Wenatchee City Council for helping a baby who fell through the bleachers at the Tacoma Dome on Feb. 20. Pictured, from left, are Wenatchee mayor Dennis Johnson, Webley’s wife, Maristella, daughter Bailey, Webley, daughter Taylor and Wenatchee fire chief Stan Smoke.
It was the mother’s scream. And the uncertainty.
Being part of it without the accustomed knowledge of what had happened and how to help.
That’s what Wenatchee firefighter Clint Webley remembers about Feb. 20, the day a baby girl fell through the bleachers at the Tacoma Dome.
One of six brothers, all varsity wrestlers during their time at Quincy High School, Webley was at the state high school wrestling championship, off duty and surrounded by family, when 18-month-old Serenity Ayala fell about 30 feet onto the steel and concrete beneath the bleachers.
He was among the first to rush to the baby’s aid and stabilize her until Tacoma’s emergency crews arrived.
“My little brother was due up to wrestle when I heard the most earth-shattering scream. It made my hair stand up on end. I knew something was terribly wrong,” Webley recalled last Thursday at Wenatchee’s City Hall after receiving the Good Citizen Award for his quick action from the Wenatchee City Council.
“I climbed over a couple of people to get out. The woman was standing over the hole where her baby had fallen. I ran down the bleachers to the tournament floor. It was really quite confusing because of the number of people.”
Webley said he collided with Matt Jorgensen, the wrestling coach at Deer Park, himself an off-duty firefighter.
The two ran under the bleachers. A string of wrestling coaches and others followed.
“She was lying face down. Her neck was resting on a piece of angle iron. She was just regaining consciousness,” he said. “I suspected the worst. Then she regained consciousness and started crying.”
Webley said they carefully rolled Serenity onto her back on the concrete floor.
Quincy wrestling coaches Mike Wallace and William Clifton held the baby’s arms and legs, while Webley and Jorgensen checked her for life-threatening injuries.
She appeared to be OK.
Emergency crews arrived on the scene and transported Serenity to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with a slight skull fracture, which doctors are hoping will heal on its own.
The baby went home the next day, but has appointments for follow-up checkups to ensure her fracture heals properly.
“We’re doing good,” Serenity’s mom, Aracelie Duran said by phone Friday from her home in Othello. “She complains of headaches and has a bad temper, but other than that, she’s good. She’s really energetic and likes to play. It’s actually a miracle.”
She recalls climbing to their seats, sitting her daughter down and turning her back for a second to put the stroller down.
When she turned back, Serenity was already falling through a barely noticeable opening in the bleachers. Dome staff have since covered the hole.
“It was the worst thing ever,” she said. “Literally I thought I had lost my baby. Just seeing her go down. I tried reaching, but I couldn’t.”
Ruben Martinez, the girl’s uncle, was also at the Tacoma Dome at the time; he’s the head coach of Othello’s wrestling team.
“I will hold (Webley and Jorgensen) in my heart forever, along with those other gentlemen and women who were there quickly to comfort and give immediate medical care to my little precious angel Serenity,” Martinez said. “They were the guardian angels that my little niece needed. I knew that as soon as I saw (Webley and Jorgensen) there tending to my little niece that everything was going to be all right. Your words of support and encouragement that she was OK, both during the incident and afterwards, gave me the ability to continue doing my job. I don’t know if I could have continued up until that point that I spoke to both of you.
“My family and I, and the members of my wrestling team want to make sure that (they) know that (they) are both heroes and wish nothing but the best for both of (them).”
Webley thinks about the drama he would have missed if he’d been part of the emergency crew, which, like all emergency crews, doesn’t appear on the scene until after the initial scramble.
“What I took away from it the most was what happens before someone calls 911,” he said at the council meeting.
His own 9-month-old daughter, Taylor, squirmed in his arms and tugged at his firefighter’s badge.
His wife, Maristella, listened nearby, keeping an eye on their older daughter, Bailey, who was eating chewy candies from a package.
“Everything that happened — we would have missed all that,” he said. “I never would have heard that woman scream. In that situation, you’re never really prepared for what you might find.”
Post-Register writer Doug Flanagan contributed to this story.
