Kathy Fiscus

Kathryn Anne Fiscus (August 21, 1945 – April 8, 1949) was a three-year-old girl who died after falling into a well in San Marino, California.

[1][2] On the afternoon[3] of April 8, 1949, Kathy was playing with her nine-year-old sister, Barbara, and cousin, Gus, in a field in San Marino when she fell down the 14-inch-wide (36 cm) shaft of an abandoned water well.

Within hours, a major rescue effort was underway with "drills, derricks, bulldozers, and trucks from a dozen towns, three giant cranes, and 50 floodlights from Hollywood studios.

A rope was lowered from the top of the well and tied around her to gently pull her into a different posture from which Dr. Robert McCullock, one of the Fiscus family physicians, working from the lateral shaft, was able to free her.

[4] The failed rescue attempt received nationwide attention in the US as it was carried live on radio and on television—a still-new medium—by station KTLA and their reporter Stan Chambers at the beginning of his career.

The location of the well is on the upper field of San Marino High School and is unmarked except for a cap covering the opening.

[13] Country singer Jimmie Osborne wrote and recorded the 1949 song "The Death of Little Kathy Fiscus" (King 788).