'Can I Hug You Again?'

Lori Kurtzman: He remembers the blond hair, the bobbing head, the lifeless body they pulled from the chilly water that evening. Her dad cried from the banks of the Olentangy River: Save my child. Save my child.

And so Gary Wing worked and worked, desperate to get a breath out of that little blond girl. His partner thought it was too late. Wing, then a Sharon Township firefighter, said he wasn't going to stop until the medics arrived.

"She was just as limp as a rag doll," he said.

Wing paused. He knew how the story ended, at least that part of it. He jumped ahead to what brought him there yesterday, a 70-year-old retired firefighter standing outside a Worthington restaurant, his pocket stuffed with tissues.

"I don't know why I waited so long to find this girl," he said.