Two men's quick action rescues dad, son

Nathan Caskey was ice-fishing with a buddy on Lake Harriet on Sunday afternoon when a guy shot by him hollering that a man and his son had just fallen through the ice.

"I was sitting on my bucket trying to catch some crappies," said Caskey who instantly dropped his rod and bolted to help the running stranger, Matthew Kunkel, drag a large, red body board from the lifeguard stand to where the father and his son, a boy of about 9, were struggling.

The man and boy had been ice-surfing on a bladed triangular contraption when the ice gave way.

Kunkel, a 29-year-old north Minneapolis resident who works as an engineer in Eagan, had been watching their ice-surfing efforts from shore, where he'd been taking a stroll. At one point Kunkel looked over and saw that one of them was in the water in the middle of the lake and the other one was nowhere in sight.

Someone else on shore called 911.

"We started running from the southeast corner of the lake toward them down by the bandstand," Caskey said. "We probably ran for 10 minutes to get there."

By the time they got there, the father had already hoisted his son, whose name was Adam, back onto the ice.

Kunkel went toward the father, who was half submerged and resting on his ice surfer.

"I sort of yelled to him from 50 yards away, 'Are you OK?' I wanted to at least assess if he was in imminent danger. He seemed to not be. So then this other guy [Nathan] and I could take the time to approach him from the safest route. ... So we ran over to him. I got down on my stomach and eased my way out to him and pushed the sled to him. He kind of grabbed onto it," said Kunkel.

"There was about 10 feet of rope that was attached to the sled," he continued. "So I pushed the sled out to him. I couldn't stand up and pull to get this guy out because of the thin ice. So I would sort of plant my feet into the ice. And he would pull himself a little ways. And I would back up and plant myself again. And he would pull. And we did that probably five or six times until he was able to get up on the ice."

Said Caskey, "Once we got there, we got them out of the water in five minutes, if that."

He said he was startled to see the man get to his feet as soon as they pulled him onto the ice. "I said 'No! Get down on all fours. Distribute your weight!'" he said, adding that he was recalling all of the Department of Natural Resources "Ice Is Never Safe" posters he sees every time he walks into a bait shop.

To his surprise, the father kept walking toward his son as firefighters and police, who just arrived, approached from 50 yards away. The man, who did thank them, might have been in shock, he said.

The man and his son, whom authorities did not identify, were taken to a local hospital and treated for hypothermia.

A spokeswoman for the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office said the duo rescued the two so fast that a Hennepin Water Patrol unit was called off the case.

Kunkel and Caskey have never met before, but said Sunday they swapped phone numbers and will meet for drinks later this week.

After the incident, Kunkel drove home, changed clothes and took his wife to a Minneapolis restaurant for a drink. "I just needed to chill out," he said.