'The adrenaline was flowing': Park Ridge man describes crash rescue

An adrenaline-filled day had ironically started out with a lazy morning for Randall Schmidt and Kristin Berg.

The Park Ridge couple, who rescued the only known survivor of a plane that crashed into Lake Michigan off the state's western coast Friday, were on the second to last day of their annual boating trip, finishing breakfast on their 42-foot cabin cruiser, the "Kristin Says," docked in Frankfort, Mich.

It was foggy, recalled Schmidt, a University of Chicago law professor. He and his wife were in no rush to begin heading south to Saugatuck, then home.

Around 10:15 a.m., after they'd been cruising for about an hour, Schmidt heard a fisherman call the U.S. Coast Guard on the radio about a plane in the water, a few miles off the coast of Ludington, Mich.

A Cessna 206 airplane, en route from Alma, Mich. to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., had experienced electrical failure and crashed, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Pilot and local businessman Jerry Freed was flying Alma Public Schools Superintendent Don Pavlik, undergoing esophageal cancer treatment, and his wife Irene, to the clinic. Also on board were friends James Hall, a doctor, and Earl Davidson, another pilot.

"I looked at the coordinates, and this fisherman was about 15 miles away," Schmidt said.

The couple made a snap decision, adjusting their course to help with the rescue search.

Nearing Ludington around noon, Schmidt said, he began circling his boat, first going east toward shore, then north, then south.

All of a sudden, his wife started screaming. "Man in the water! Man overboard!"

Freed, wearing a life vest, was bobbing just 60 feet behind the boat.

"When Kristin yelled, that's when the adrenaline hit me," Schmidt said. "The adrenaline was flowing and there was no thinking, it was just this is what I was going to do."

Fearing that if he turned the vessel he'd lose sight of the man, Schmidt started backing up the cruiser.

"I had in my mind what I expected to see," Schmidt said. "What I didn't expect was a person in a life vest, no blood."

Berg, 55, got on the boat's swim platform, and threw Freed, 66, a life ring, pulling him toward the boat.

Schmidt pulled him onto the boat by his belt.

The couple laid Freed on his back, covering him with a blanket and placing towels behind his head.

He was shivering and told them he'd been in the water for over an hour.

"He said 'I'm OK, but my buddies are still out,'" Schmidt said.

Freed was clearly in shock, Schmidt said.

"He would answer my questions but not volunteer information," he said.

Freed told Schmidt that at least two others, Hall and Davidson, got out of the plane, but they got separated in rough water.

"He just kept saying, it was his buddies. He had volunteered to (fly the plane)."

Everything Schmidt learned from the pilot he then yelled out to other boats that had arrived in the vicinity, in hopes they could use the information to search for the other four passengers.

The Mason County Sheriff's boat arrived shortly, to take Freed to the hospital.

"By the time he was leaving the boat he seemed a little bit better. He said he would be in touch with me, I assume he will be," Schmidt said.

Freed was released Saturday, but has thus far declined media interviews.

For several more hours that afternoon, Schmidt and Berg continued to circle the area where they spotted Freed.

"We didn't see anything else," he said. By late afternoon, "we decided, at this point we'd done all we could and we'd leave. That was emotional because there were at least two other people that had survived the crash and were in the water in life vests."

Authorities have continued the search for the four other passengers, but no one has yet been found.

Berg and Schmidt sailed back to Diversey Harbor in Chicago, arriving Sunday, where they were greeted with cheers by fellow boaters.

"They were all congratulating me and applauding me," Schmidt said. "... The fact that we couldn't find the others really made it bittersweet."

• Daily Herald news services contributed to this report.