A Chicago comedian is speaking out about the daring rescue effort that saved a drowning toddler stranded in the freezing waters of Lake Michigan.
Six days before his birthday on February 24, on a bright winter afternoon along the Lake Michigan waterfront in Chicago, Rio Cundiff had an idea that now seems like a joke. “I was looking at the water while on the phone with a friend, and I thought, ‘How beautiful it is. I want to jump in,'” he said. defender In an interview on Friday. Little did he know.
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Cundiff, 31, arrived early for work near Belmont Harbor on February 18 and wandered along the water’s edge as usual. He loves the lake. He loves floating in the ocean in the summer, ideally “while drinking beer,” he says. He was sitting on a bench and answering the phone “vibing,” she said.
Then I heard a scream. “I just looked up and thought, ‘Oh my god,’ and I just saw the stroller go straight toward the lake, with the wind blowing,” he recalled.
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At that moment, the punchline disappeared. There was none of the self-deprecation and self-deprecation that are staples of his stand-up, including his baby face and texting anxiety. There was only movement. He threw down his jacket and cell phone and ran.
“I was like, ‘Maybe we’ll go in.’ And I jumped in and tried to keep us afloat as much as possible,” he said.
Early media reports stated that Cundiff did not know how to swim. He resented that characterization. “I can swim,” he said, explaining that he told reporters at the hospital that he was not a very good swimmer and that he “prefers floating with a beer in my hand.” “They were running saying, ‘I can’t swim,'” he says.
“I can swim. I just don’t want to swim,” he said with a laugh.
An 8-month-old baby was being pushed into a stroller. Cundiff had to maintain buoyancy throughout his frame while treading freezing cold water. At one point, both heads fell down. He describes his memories piecemeal, as if playing a movie where he already knows the ending but doesn’t yet fully believe it.
“There were a few minutes where I didn’t know if we were going to be able to stay afloat,” he said. “I grabbed her hand for a second. Her little pinky. I rubbed it for two seconds, and I thought, ‘Okay.'” … “Okay, I have to keep going.”
A bystander named Lou dropped his jacket. Then the lifebuoy arrived. They were about 30 feet from the ladder. Cundiff’s muscles were tense. When he finally got there and the baby started crying, he felt a kind of release.
“As long as she was crying, once she was out, that’s all I needed,” he said.
A few days pass, and Cundiff has become something he doesn’t quite know how to live: a hero. “That’s strange,” he said. “I just did what anyone would do. What does it mean to watch a stroller and baby sink?”
The shock of the cold didn’t fully hit me until afterward. After emerging from the lake, an ambulance took him to the emergency room. At the hospital, doctors monitored him after his heart enzymes rose to more than 13 times normal levels. This value may also be associated with heart distress. He stayed for about 28 hours. He was not allowed to eat in case doctors needed to perform a cardiac catheterization.
“It was very sad,” he said. “I love to eat.” After leaving the hospital, he headed straight to Red Hot Ranch for the cheeseburger he’d always wanted. “I went through a bit of trauma. I wanted this cheeseburger,” he said.
The line could easily go into the set.
Cundiff has been performing stand-up on and off in Chicago for nearly eight years, mastering open mics and putting together sets longer than 30 minutes. Born in Russia and adopted by American parents, Cundiff grew up in Kansas before moving to the Windy City to pursue comedy. It’s either there or New York City, which he said is more suited to “current comics.” His comedy is personal, observational, and sarcastic. “The things I talk about the most are things like being transgender and having a baby face,” he said.
He transitioned during the pandemic, first identifying as non-binary, then realizing it, and now saying with a clarity that sounds almost comical in its simplicity, “I’m definitely a man. That’s very clear. I’m a boy and I’m a man.”
When asked which comedian he most admires, Cundiff doesn’t hesitate. “Tig Notaro is my favorite comedian of all time,” he said, also naming transgender comedian River Butcher, who helped shape a generation of queer performers.
There’s something about him that makes you feel less anxious: his soft features, his quick smile, the way he oscillates between sincerity and punchline. He openly talks about his insecurities, especially self-promotion. “For some reason, I’m more scared to send an email now than I am to jump into a lake,” he said.
The rescue inevitably changed his set. He’s already taking it to open mics.
“Oh yeah, I just kind of fell in love with it,” he said of returning to performing in front of an audience so soon.
In the current American climate, where transgender people are relentlessly legislated, debated, and lampooned, Cundiff’s story is something else: a corrective, a disproof, a reminder.
He resists that framework even though he understands it.
“The fact that I’m transgender has nothing to do with me jumping into a lake and saving people who can’t save themselves,” he said. “Rather, take away the fact that I am a human being who has done human things, and my gender has nothing to do with that.”
Then, unable to resist a sharper voice, he added, “How many cis people can say they saved a baby?”
This is, in a way, the perfect joke. It’s edgy, irreverent, and grounded in undeniable truth.
Then the baby’s father reached out to help. they met. They plan to keep in touch. “He was just like, ‘We’re family. We’re in each other’s lives.'” Cundiff is looking forward to watching her child grow.
For now, he’s back to doing what he did in front of the lake: performing, thrifting, watching sports, playing with his girlfriend and Bernedoodle, and trying to cope with the flood of attention that still feels disproportionate to him.
He insists that this story is not about courage. not much. To him, headlines, donations, and applause are noise.
For someone who doesn’t like to be called a hero, the outcome that followed was unrealistic in other ways.
Cundif does not have health insurance. Started by a friend and his girlfriend gofundme The page was posted while Cundiff was still in the hospital and stated that Cundiff was living paycheck to paycheck. The fundraiser quickly exceeded its original goal, collecting thousands of small donations and several large anonymous donations. Cundiff described the outpouring as “insane” and “overwhelming”, stressing that he never expected so much attention to what he considered “human behavior”.
As of press time, a fundraiser started by Cundiff’s best friend had raised about $73,000. Ms Cundiff said she was almost perplexed by the amount raised and thought her friend had set the amount to stop accepting donations.
But somewhere in Chicago, a comedian who once joked about drinking beer and floating lazily on a lake has new material about cold water, tiny fingers, and how quickly an ordinary afternoon can change.
“The most important thing in this whole story is that the baby is safe,” Cundiff said.
Watch Rio Cundiff’s performance at Laugh Factory Chicago below.
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