It was quite a Christmas for Kayla Masotto. The day after the big holiday, she risked her life and rescued a man who fell through the ice on Poospatuck Creek.
Legis. Jim Mazzarella recognized her in early February for her bravery and quick thinking at a legislative meeting.
Masotto had been relaxing with her sister, visiting from Florida and watching television.
“My living room looks out to the water and that’s when I noticed a man struggling,” she said of the man on a Jet Ski who had fallen through the ice.”
A native Center Moriches resident who graduated from Center Moriches High School, Masotto now lives in Mastic Beach in a house purchased with her fiancée that borders the Poospatuck Creek.
“He was still floating on the Jet Ski, and I had gone out to my dock and asked if he needed help,” Masotto said. “He said he had people coming. I went inside, then heard people on the other side screaming that the Jet Ski was sinking.”
While onlookers by the Poospatuck Reservation were trying to get to him off a dock via kayak and rope, Masotto grabbed her paddleboard and maneuvered it over the ice to the struggling Jet Skier, where he grabbed on. She then pushed both of them towards the dock, where bystanders assisted in bringing him safely to shore.
“I think emergency services were already called,” Mazzarella said of the rescue. “There are two sides of the creek: one on Riverside Avenue, the other side borders the Poospatuck Reservation. The Jet Ski got stuck on the ice, then toppled in the water. By the time EMS came, she’d had him on the paddleboard; there were other civilian people from the other side who tried to pull him out.”
Mazzarella added, “It wasn’t only her dropping everything. She’s a water person, an avid sailor and paddleboarder, so she knows what she’s doing. The adrenaline was flowing, and she grabbed her paddleboard and used it.
“I asked her what he said when she got to him and he said, ‘I can’t feel my arms, I can’t feel my legs and I don’t know if I’m going to make it.’
“He was fortunate there were other people yelling and she looked out. Sometimes, it changes a person’s personality, and they pay it forward.”
Masotto grew up navigating local waterways. A graduate of Stony Brook University, she has a successful career in ophthalmology pharmaceutical sales with Bausch & Lomb. She was asked if the rescued man came by after the incident.
“Yes, we met a few days after,” Masotto said. “He and his family wanted to meet me. They brought me flowers.
“He said I was his guardian angel.”
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