Roselle man praised for saving neighbor during floods

Roselle officials are praising a resident whose expertise as an electrician saved a neighbor's life during last month's floods.

Rick Tivy and his wife, Nancy, were battling water in their basement and a power outage in the early morning hours of July 24. The couple lit candles in the living room to keep their three young children out of the pitch black and threw open all of their windows to beat the heat.

Across the street, the storm also cut off electricity inside the home of Victoria Cuttone, who was with her sons Mason, 17, and Zachary, 25, while her husband was fishing in Wisconsin. Her basement was gathering water and the house was sweltering without air conditioning.

To set up an emergency power generator, Mason manually opened the electric garage door and the family began trying to salvage what they could from the water.

When electricity was restored around 2 a.m., Mason left his mom and brother in the basement and went to manually close the garage door again.

That's when 8-year-old Mckenna Tivy heard a scream travel through the pouring rain.

"We could hear Mason across the street screaming at the top of his lungs," said Nancy Tivy. "It sounded like a wounded animal."

The Tivys ran outside in their pajamas and spotted Mason lying on the ground beneath his garage door. Rick Tivy sprinted through the huge puddles, tripping on his way to rescue Mason.

"Because he was under the door, I thought the door was crushing him," Tivy said.

But when he grabbed the teen, a jolt ran through Tivy and the electrician realized the true problem.

"As soon as I touched him I got shocked right through my whole body and I knew he was getting electrocuted," Tivy said.

Mason's body had seized up and he screamed to Tivy that he couldn't release his hand from the door. Scrambling to find a piece of wood or material that does not conduct electricity, Tivy was out of luck.

So the man karate chopped the teen's arm, which released him from the door with faulty wiring, while the rest of the Tivys called 911 and gathered supplies such as blankets.

Victoria Cuttone said she believes her son would be dead without Tivy's help.

"I don't know what I would have done without them," she said. "It's all so bizarre how it happened, that they actually heard him through all that rain. Talk about a miracle."

Even as paramedics took Mason to Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village - then to Loyola University Hospital in Maywood to treat burns on his hands and leg and check for internal burns - the Tivys stayed with their neighbors, shuttling Victoria Cuttone behind her son.

Now Roselle officials think Tivy should be honored, and village spokeswoman Melissa Brito said Tivy and Mason will be profiled in the next edition of "The Roselle Reporter."

But Tivy said the rescue was instinctive: a matter of having proper training and being in the right place at the right time.

Tivy and his wife agree the accident gave them a new perspective.

"That evening, I was feeling very disgusted and upset," said Nancy Tivy. "My husband has been laid off for 18 months, unemployment ran out, the basement is flooding, and I'm thinking everything is terrible. But this clarifies things and gave both of us a wake-up. We have our children. We have our health."