Robert Stanford Rand helped to save a woman from falling, Laguna Hills, California, August 10, 2008. A 22-year-old woman stood outside a chain-link fence atop a parapet of an overpass and threatened to jump the 50 feet to the highway below. Rand, 43, highway patrol officer, responded to the scene, as did other officers, including sheriff’s deputies. As some of the officers attempted to secure the woman by holds through the fence, Rand stepped onto the inches-wide edge of the parapet outside the fence and moved about 65 feet along it to her, one of the deputies following him. They grasped the woman by the arms, but she struggled against them as she dangled from their grip over the highway. A second deputy went to the outside of the fence and helped Rand and the first deputy pull the woman back up to the parapet. They held her to the fence until a fire truck equipped with a bucket apparatus responded to the scene and lowered the woman, and then the officers, to ground level. Rand sustained scrapes to his arms and wrists, and he suffered back pain. He recovered.
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