Adam Hatfield is the kind of guy you want to marry. The groom and his bride, Julie, were in La Crosse Riverside Park on Saturday taking some pre-nuptial photos. The sun was shining, all was right — until they heard someone screaming “Allie! Allie!”
When they looked to see where the yelling was coming from, they saw a man looking over the wall at the water. And then he jumped. Hatfield immediately sprang into action, heading for the Mississippi River. The photographer, Russ Konrad, was right behind him, while the bride hiked up that dress and went looking for help.
Hatfield and Konrad helped fish the little girl, Allie, and her grandfather out of the water. Everyone made it out safely, and they dried off with a towel the photographer was using to keep the wedding gown from getting dirty.
However, there was no time for pleasantries. Although Adam shook hands with the man whose life he saved, he never caught his name. He had a previous engagement after all, one not to be upstaged by a daring rescue. The pair exchanged vows, but later realized the seriousness of the day’s events, when a guest took note of the knee holes in the groom’s tuxedo.
Adam, a 28-year-old editor at WKBT-TV tells the Wisconsin State Journal, “I don’t think it hit me until that point. It definitely made for an interesting story.” The best man summed it up best in his toast, “save a life, get a wife.”
He even made it onto Keith Olbermann’s “World’s Best Person” segment.
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