Todd Kanno wasn't waiting for his moment to be a hero, but he was prepared when the time came to save a life.
The 19-year-old Honeyville man took CPR classes as a Boy Scout; took emergency first-responder courses during high school; had been given lessons by his father, a retired Utah Highway Patrol officer; and completed even more training with the Honeyville Fire Department.
All that training helped him save 2 1/2-year-old Amara Young, of Brigham City, on Tuesday afternoon when Kanno fought his way into a car that was on its roof in a drainage ditch to pull the little girl out of the water and then revive her.
"At the time, I really did not feel anything," Kanno said; he just did what he had been prepared to do.
"Afterward, it really hit me. I cried for three hours. I was really shaken up."
The 2008 Box Elder High School graduate was up until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday and couldn't get out of his mind the sight of the child's aunt screaming that there was a baby still in the car.
"I just keep replaying the image. I just felt horrible" about what happened, he said, even though he had been able to help.
Wednesday afternoon, Kanno still didn't know the name of the little girl he pulled from the water.
Kanno was headed home from a trip to Smith and Edwards around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, traveling north on Interstate 15 near Willard Bay.
"I was talking on the phone to my mom and I see a puff of dust on the other side of the road," Kanno said.
That whirlwind of dust was a two-door 1989 Dodge Colt losing control after a tire went flat, with driver Shannon Cantwell, 26, of Brigham City, and four children under the age of 6 inside.
Cantwell hit the brakes, Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Aaron Beesley said Tuesday night, and the vehicle rolled onto its side and slid into a drainage ditch, where it came to rest upside-down, partially under water near Mile Marker 355.
Beesley said Cantwell was able to free herself and her three children, but her 2 1/2-year-old niece was still inside when Kanno arrived after taking the next exit and driving back to the accident site.
A semitruck driver was phoning for emergency responders and a couple in an SUV had stopped when Kanno arrived, he said, and he helped Cantwell pull a little boy from the car.
Then he heard Cantwell in hysterics, screaming that a baby was still in the car.
Kanno tried the driver's side door first, then the passenger side. He came back to the driver's side.
"I yanked the door open by some miracle," he said. "All I could see was the bottom of the car seat and her foot that had a cast on it. The rest was all under water."
Kanno, in the muddy water up to his knees, moved the front seat and undid the buckles to get Amara Young out.
"Her eyes were rolled back. Her face was blue, all pale in my arms," Kanno said. He checked her pulse and found none.
He gave the child two breaths, then began compressions.
About the 25th compression, Kanno said, the girl began breathing, choking water out of her lungs.
That's when emergency responders arrived to take over and get her aboard an emergency helicopter to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.
Beesley estimated the child had been under water four to six minutes.
On Wednesday, Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Lee Perry said Amara was stabilized in intensive care in a medically induced coma at Primary Children's.
He said more will likely be known about her recovery and long-term condition by Friday.
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