Daughter-in-law of retired info chief rescued - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Daughter-in-law of retired info chief rescued

NEW YORK — A young American aid worker — trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house that was destroyed in Haiti’s earthquake — has been rescued by her husband.

Frank Thorp told CBS’s “The Early Show” by phone from Haiti on Wednesday that he drove 100 miles to Port-au-Prince once he learned of the quake, and dug for over an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and her co-worker Charles Dietsch. The two were trapped under about a foot of concrete, he said.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” Thorp said.

Thorp said he was in an area about 6 hours north of the capital when the temblor struck. He got a quick call from his wife telling him she was trapped, and that was all. So he began his long drive toward the devastation.

Arriving at the destroyed house, he said he saw his wife’s hand from under the rubble and heard her tell him to keep it together and just get her out.

“We had to pull bricks and bricks and bricks and wood and doors and metal away for at least an hour before we were able to get her and her co-worker out,” he said.

The executive director of Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn., Emily Smack, told CBS a security guard at the mission house is still missing. A housecleaner had severe injuries and may lose both legs, she said.

Jillian Thorp is a daughter-in-law retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, who stepped down in August as the Navy’s chief information officer.

Contacted at his home Tuesday night, elder Thorp said he had been told that his 24-year-old daughter-in-law had tried to call for help using her cell phone and that her leg was badly injured.

He said Jillian had been living in Haiti since August when she took the lead at the mission house, which works with orphans and children with HIV. Before moving there, Jillian had traveled to Haiti several times with her family to participate in humanitarian work, he said.

“She’s a superstar,” he said of Jillian’s devotion to aid work.