Farmer who rushed to save girl is surprised by the fame

Farmer who rushed to save girl is surprised by the fame

Alaina Pitton falls over a low fence rail in this still from home video. Right behind her is a 150-foot cliff.

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By MARY NEVANS-PEDERSON, Telegraph Herald

PETERSBURG, Iowa (AP) - Working in the rain on his 650-acre Delaware County farm, Craig Wulfekuhle does not look like your typical media darling, nor does he want to be a celebrity.

But millions of people already have seen the video of the 37-year-old farmer risking his life to save a 3-year-old girl, and national news organizations keep calling. He planned to get up earlier than usual again this week for phone interviews just after 5 a.m. for two national morning newscasts.

What the brief home video shows is a typical family outing at a scenic ocean overlook on the Oregon coast. Wulfekuhle's wife, Karen, is running the family's camera and asks her young daughters and a cousin's daughter to turn around and look at the camera. In the wink of an eye, Alaina Pitton, 3, slips backward through the protective fence railing and slides toward the edge of a 150-foot cliff. A second later, Wulfekuhle bolts over the fence, grabs the screaming child and pulls her up to safety.

"If she had not grabbed onto the grass, she would have kept sliding," said Wulfekuhle last week in TV appearances on his rural Petersburg farm where he grows corn to feed his hogs.

The incident happened during a June family vacation west of Portland at Ecola State Park. On Wednesday, a Portland TV station aired the story and video, and since then national media outlets have clamored for interviews with Alaina's family. Eventually, they tracked down the Wulfekuhles to talk to them about the near-tragedy. One network was looking at flying the family to New York to appear on a news show, but Wulfekuhle has no intention of leaving his farm's workload.

The farmer-turned-hero has tried to stay out of the limelight, minimizing his rescue effort.

"Looking at the tape, I thought, 'That's all the faster I went?' I should have gotten there to grab her before she fell through," he said.

Wulfekuhle didn't think about what he was doing when he watched Alaina tumble backward toward the high, rocky cliff.

"It was instinct, you just jump. But it felt like it took forever," he added.

Alaina was not the only one crying after her rescue.

"The kids were crying. The moms were freaking out and thanking me, but it was not a big deal," Wulfekuhle said.

Alaina's mother, Charlotte, said it took her weeks to get over her horror at what almost happened to her daughter. She called her cousin a "guardian angel" for saving Alaina.

The media have paid the Wulfekuhles to use their home video. The couple plans to donate the money, through the Pitton family, to the Oregon state park system to fix that fence segment and any other dangerous barriers.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

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