Novi heroes earn lifesaving award, family’s eternal gratitude after rescuing drowning boy

Kailyn Alton (formerly Kailyn Gasso) and Marvin Petrous with Ian Cho, days after the strangers saved the 7-year-old from drowning in a Novi pool.

Photo by Youngjoo Cho

One moment, Marvin Petrous was just a dad watching his kids and others play in a Novi pool. Seconds later, he and Kailyn Alton were heroes, saving 7-year-old Ian Cho from drowning and his family from a lifetime of sorrow.

Petrous and Alton were recently honored with Civilian Lifesaving citations during the Novi Police and Fire Awards Ceremony.

“It’s a true honor,” Alton said. “I think Marvin and I both stepped up to something that needed to be done, and fortunately, there is a great outcome from it. We can still see the child living a happy, healthy life.”

The entire episode, which happened a year ago, still feels unreal to Cho, as well as to his son’s saviors, all of whom were strangers to each other at the time. “For the first few months, I thought, ‘Did this really happen and why did I see it?’” Petrous recounted. “I felt it was my time to do something, God wanted me to do it. To me, that’s winning the lottery.”

Petrous and Alton were at the Liberty Park community pool enjoying the day when 7 year-old Ian Cho went under and never resurfaced. Petrous jumped in to pull Cho out. His voice breaks now as he remembers: “He was lifeless, gone, blue in the face… It was so hard, so hard. He was just gone.”

Petrous began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Alton, who had been on the other side of the pool, arrived at the side of Petrous, seemingly “out of nowhere.” The off-duty ER nurse took over CPR on Ian, who didn’t have a pulse.

“Time goes by so slow and so fast at the same,” recalled Alton. “It was maybe a minute or so. He started coughing up pool water and regained color. He was confused; a lot had just happened to him… The whole pool, all the moms and dads were very emotional.”

–Hometownlife.com