Quick actions, proper training, the right people, and a little bit of fate all helped an elderly woman escape her car from the frigid waters of Lake Stevens Thursday night.
Matthew Loverink had just left hanging out with a group of friends when he noticed something at the North Shore Boat Launch to the Lake—It appeared as if a car had gone out on the pier.
“It just didn’t look right, so I wanted to make sure everything was okay,” Loverink said.
It was far from okay. The car hadn’t been on the pier but rather floating next to it. The headlights pointed down, revealing the Ford Bronco Sport was slowly sinking into around ten feet of water. Loverink ran out on the pier, eventually diving in.
“I actually hesitated quite a bit. I was trying to do everything I could from the pier. She was very engaged with me and with 911,” he said.
Alex Fatkin, a firefighter with Snohomish County Regional Fire & Rescue got the call on his phone, while he was at home enjoying his last night before going back on rotation.
“I suited up in my house and drove down there,” Fatkin said, " I figured I could lend a hand but ended up being pretty submerged in it.”’
Literally. Fatkin was in the water, trying to help the woman out of her car. When he got to the boat launch, Matthew was on the hood of the car, balancing it after a slight shift throwing the thousands of pounds of metal off balance.
“It looked like it was going to start to roll,” Loverink said, “I dove in and grabbed on the opposite side of the car to balance it out so she could try and get out.”
“Big kudos to him,” said Alex Fatkin. “By him standing on the opposite side it helped to level out the car to prevent it from sinking.”
0 of 10
Time was running out; the car was taking on water through the doors, and Fatkin estimated it was up to the woman’s ankles. He broke the window with his window punch.
“I knew we only had a few seconds before it started to go down. She started to make her way out of the window but was unable to, so I just grabbed her jacket and was able to pull her out and onto the paddleboard which was staged on the hood of the car.”
The woman was taken to the hospital, Matthew dried off and warmed up at the boat launch. His years as a Navy pilot, and his time working with Snohomish County Rescue, helped provide him with the instincts to know what to do, including his trying to stay out of the 40-degree water that would send a human body immediately into shock.
“The mental preparation is doing it before and searing I would never do it again,” he said. “I have a lot of things going for me to be able to be prepared to do something like that. I wouldn’t recommend the average person do that if they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Having flown helicopters, Loverink is familiar with what to look out for when dense fog settles in. He says the visibility was around 40 feet that night.
“The fog, the inky blackness of the lake,” he recalled. “It looked like the road all the way out. I can absolutely see how this happened last night.”
“That was kind of the first time I was able to see that perfect scenario of super dark, no street lights, the water is glass, it just kind of blends in and mistakes happen,” Fatkin said.
Added to the situation--road construction on the road right next to the lake blocks off the main thoroughfare. Turn one way onto the detour, turn the other and it leads to the boat ramp.
Water rescues are common in Snohomish County, Fatkin said, especially cold water rescues. Fatkin completed his water rescue training seven months ago. This was his first rescue. It may not have happened if he wasn’t cycling through different fire stations. That meant his rescue gear was at home, instead of his home station.
“Which is another crazy thing to think about. I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason and there’s a reason I had my gear last night.” Alex said.
©2025 Cox Media Group
