Man sinks in quicksand and emerges with a girlfriend

The quicksand depicted in films, when a daring adventurer is suddenly ensnared in a life-threatening vortex of sand, is largely a myth. But that didn't make it any less scary when Mitchell O'Brien slowly began to sink.

O'Brien was on Van's Beach on the northeastern shore of Lake Michigan with his friend Breanne Sika last weekend hunting for Leland bluestones, a byproduct of the iron ore furnaces that operated in the nearby fishing village that attract rock hunters.

Some dredging had been taking place on the beach, and O'Brien, 37, from Traverse City, Michigan, said he had thought the sand felt unstable.

"'That looks really dangerous,'" he recalled Sika saying. "I turned around and ended up walking right to the spot she said was dangerous.

"I got my one foot stuck because I was trying to get my electronics out of my pocket. I knew not to panic. I have to be a macho man. You can't ask for help when you're trying to impress the girl you're with."

Soon enough, O'Brien was waist-deep in the sand. He urged Sika to take photographs, "or no one will believe us."

After 15 minutes or so trying to pull him out, the two began calling 911. They were hampered by spotty cellphone service, and the sound of the breaking waves made it hard for O'Brien to be heard.

When O'Brien finally connected, "I said to the 911 operator, 'I think my girlfriend is also trying to call.' At the same moment she was saying, 'My boyfriend is stuck.'"

That was a moment. Though they had talked about the possibility of a relationship, it was the first time they had referred to each other with those words.

O'Brien is a recovery coach and has been in recovery from alcoholism for four years. Sika, 36, also works in the recovery industry.

As they waited for emergency personnel to arrive, O'Brien said he had remained calm. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to sink all the way under the sand, like in a Looney Tunes scene. "As soon as my foot got stuck it hit bottom; it felt like cement," he said.

As it happens, drowning in quicksand in real life is nearly impossible, scientists say. Sand is denser than the human body, so even if one's legs sink, the air in the lungs keeps the body too buoyant to go all the way under.

Still, O'Brien wasn't budging. He tried to dig himself out, but the waves kept returning the sand he had scooped away.

Four firefighters soon arrived. They gave O'Brien a lifejacket, put a rope around him and pulled. One firefighter joined him in the muck, being careful not to fall in himself.

"Between them pulling, him pushing and me crawling, I got out," O'Brien said. It took about 10 minutes.

Dan Besson, the Leland Township Fire and Rescue chief, told MLive that the city was posting cautionary signage at the beach to warn people about the dredging outwash. "It's the first time we've had an issue," he said.

O'Brien's ordeal might not have been as dramatic as the scene in "The Princess Bride," when Buttercup sinks instantly in sand in the Fire Swamp and Westley dives in headfirst to rescue her. But there was still romance.

O'Brien said that he and Sika had been "really good friends" before the beach visit, but that for a long time "neither of us knew that we were interested in each other."

Something about sinking in quicksand seemed to concentrate the mind wonderfully, and now they are official.