Alaska Woman Vanishes Under the Ice Trying to Save Dog

A nurse and mother of four went into a frozen Alaska river in an attempt to save one of the family’s dogs Saturday and has not been seen since. Authorities resumed the search for Amanda Richmond Rogers, 45, Tuesday, NBC News reports. She and her husband were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary Saturday with a walk along the North Fork Eagle River trail with two of their four dogs when one of the dogs, an Irish wolfhound named Groot, stopped to take a drink from a small opening in the ice and ended up falling through, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Her husband, Brian Rogers, went into the river first but couldn’t find the dog. As he came out of the water, his wife went in. “She is an emergency room nurse, trained to help and save people. In this situation, she was going to save our dog. I yelled but doubt she even heard me as she was completely concentrating on saving the dog,” he says. “Before I could get back to the opening to try and grab her I could see her SWIMMING downstream under the ice and then out of sight.” He says the dogs were family members, not just pets, and that to him and the couple’s four sons, his wife “died a hero.” (Read more Alaska stories.)