Woman Sees Man Tossing Sack in River, Dives After It and Gets a Horrifying Surprise

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Imagine that you’re driving across a bridge with a rushing river underneath. As you’re crossing, you see a car in front of you toss a sack out the window down into the river. Something isn’t right about it. You think there might be something in the sack that shouldn’t be there. What do you do?

For an anonymous woman in Acampo, California, this scene just didn’t sit well. She and her passenger were worried about what might be in the sack and went down to the Mokelumne River to investigate. What happened next was a desperate struggle for survival. In the process of getting to the sack, the woman herself almost got swept away by the raging river and had to be dragged out by her friend, as neighbor Nancy Roberds told KXTV in Sacramento.

Together, they managed to get the soaking sack out of the current only to find their suspicions were correct. When they looked inside, there were six tiny puppies, scared out of their minds and soaked to the bone. Worse still, one of the puppies had stopped breathing. The woman performed CPR and miraculously managed to resuscitate the pup.

The rescuer found a wagon, put the puppies in a crate on top of it, and pulled it along the road, hoping to find someone who could help. She loved the puppies but didn’t have the resources to bring them home with her. When neighbor Nancy Roberds heard the story, she offered to help out by posting notices online to find fosters for them.

Anna Charlesworth, who lives in nearby Lodi, saw the posts online almost immediately and told KXTV that she had to do something to help. “You don’t have anyone to take them, I'll take them.” When she first got the puppies, they were still very traumatized by their brush with death by drowning.

Charlesworth said she just focused on creating a safe environment where they could recover. “I made them comfortable, I fed them. I just let them acclimate to their new space, and as you can see, they’re acting like puppies.”

Just as incredible as the tag team rescue was the fact that the puppy whose heart had stopped beating and had to be given CPR went on to become the most active and rambunctious of the whole litter! Charlesworth couldn’t believe that someone had left these sweet little angels for dead. “These were healthy puppies,” she told the Animal Friends  Connection Humane Society in Lodi. “These were just puppies that somebody just didn’t want.”

People responding to the Humane Society’s call for donations to help Charlesworth afford to get all the puppies vaccinated and micro-chipped were outraged at the cruel disposal of the dogs. One user wrote: “Imagine how calloused the person is who threw these puppies into the river, obviously hoping that they would drown. You do not want that person as a friend!”

Others focused on the amazing efforts of the anonymous rescuer and Charlesworth. “Kudos to the gal who saved these sweetie babies! You get a jewel in your crown when you get to heaven!”

Meanwhile, the puppies continued to eat and grow and are now part of Charlesworth’s family. She continues to support area rescue efforts and shows no signs of slowing down when the lives of dogs are at stake.