Teen's quick actions save woman's life

Every year, officials with the Northwest Suburban Boy Scout Council, based in Mount Prospect, convene their "Gathering of Eagles."

This year's event takes place Saturday morning at the Cotillion Banquets in Palatine, when they welcome the council's 125 new Eagle Scouts awarded during the past year, their families and Scout leaders.

The Northwest Suburban Council takes in more than 15,000 boys and 5,000 adult leaders. They come from nearly two dozen communities, from as far west as Barrington, Streamwood and Hanover Park, to as far east as Des Plaines, Wheeling and Rosemont.

However, beyond recognizing their leadership, officials will present an award they rarely get to bestow: a national certificate of merit, honoring an act of heroism.

"It's very unusual," said Dee Ryan of the council's advancement committee. "We maybe see two to three a year, if we're lucky. It's because it's an act of heroism."

John Knoepfle, 18, of Arlington Heights, earned his Eagle Scout earlier this year, and along the way earned his first aid badge, while taking trips to western Kentucky and the Boundary Waters, where he honed his emergency management and leadership skills.

"We would be backpacking out of radio range of the adults who were traveling with us," said Knoepfle, a 2007 Prospect High School graduate, now a freshman at DePaul University in Chicago. "If something arose, we would have to figure out how to deal with it, so you learn to act on things."

Apparently the skills took.

Faced with a dangerously hypothermic young woman, in the outposts of Alaska, Knoepfle drew on his first aid knowledge and sprung into action. Officials with Boy Scouts of America -- based in Irving, Texas -- now are crediting him with saving the woman's life, based on testimony given from his Scout leaders.

It happened last year, when members of his Boy Scout Troop 36 in Arlington Heights traced the steps of the Klondike gold diggers, as they hiked part of the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska.

During their hardest day, after they had returned to base camp to warm up and collapse after climbing to the mountain's summit, they heard cries of help from members of another group.

A girl came shouting that members of her youth group were wet and stranded two miles away, and one was even unconscious.

"The next voice I heard was John's," said Scout Leader John Poelking of Arlington Heights. "He sprang out of his warm comfy tent and went back out in the freezing rain, and his first aid training kicked in."

According to reports, he helped to form a rescue party, before instructing others to start boiling water, prepare warm food, and set up a tent for the victims.

When the rescue group returned, they had one young member who wasn't fairing well.

"She could not feel her arms and kept falling asleep," Knoepfle said. "I had a woman boil some water and pour it in a water bottle for her to use as a hot pack, putting it under her arm.

"She was constantly falling asleep," he adds. "I would tap her on the shoulder and wake her up, because I knew that if she fell asleep her heart rate would fall."

According to his leaders, Knoepfle spent the next several hours tending to her and the others. In the morning, the young woman had to be taken by helicopter to the nearest hospital, where she recovered.

"He really did a great job, and did so immediately, without hesitation," Poelking said. "He should be proud of his actions. He certainly lived up to the Scouting ideal."