SALT LAKE CITY — A central Utah family is hoping for a miracle for their little boy who disappeared into a creek and was rescued a mile downstream in Beaver County.

Three-year-old Levi Wright is hospitalized at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City after being found in the water unresponsive.

Little Levi is a precious little cowboy to his family.

“He is everything a 3-year-old boy should be,” family friend Mindy Clark said. “He’s obsessed with the T-Rexes. He loves root beer … He loves tractors,” she said during a Zoom interview with KSL TV Wednesday.

Clark said her best friend and Levi’s mom, Kallie Wright, was watching her son play on his tractor Tuesday outside the family’s home when she ran inside for a minute to check on her 9-month-old baby.

That split-second, Mindy explained, was all it took for Levi to end up in the creek on the edge of the property that he normally stays away from.
“By the time she had turned around and come back, he was gone. And, you know, little kids, they’re fast,” Clark said.

Kallie and Spencer Wright with their son Levi in a hospital. (Courtesy Wright family)

She said because of spring runoff, the creek is running higher and with a heavier flow than normal.

“She had seen his tractor overturned and immediately dialed 911, and hopped in the water and started looking for him,” Clark explained.

The frantic search that included first responders led to finding Levi. Clark said he was about a mile downstream when he was pulled out of the water.

She said they started performing life-saving measures before Levi was flown by medical helicopter to Primary Children’s.

At first, Clark said the family was planning end-of-care, thinking Levi wouldn’t make it.

“Oh, every emotion,” Clark said, pausing as tears welled up in her eyes. “There’s nothing in life that prepares a parent for this.”

But on Wednesday morning, she said Levi was more responsive than doctors anticipated and they wanted to give him more time. Clark drove up from Arizona Wednesday to be with the family.

Levi’s dad, Spencer Wright, is well-known in the rodeo world as a professional saddle bronc rider. Many people across the country in that community are organizing fundraisers and events for the family.

As mom and dad hope their cowboy can make it through, Clark said everyone’s prayers are helping them stay strong and positive.

“Just waiting for that that glimmer of hope,” she said, “that the miracle is going to happen.”

Editor’s note: This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.

You’ve heard about the child care crisis in Utah. Parents can’t afford child care. Child care workers can’t afford to live on what they make.

I wanted to know what that really looks like when life becomes unworkable.

“We look at daycare differently,” said Ginette Bott, president and CEO of the Utah Food Bank. “These are things that families need to have, have a right to have. The availability is not there, so they’re becoming creative, and I’m seeing the results of that creativity.”

The results of that creativity are frightening.

Home alone

“Some of these families find it easier to buy an inexpensive cell phone, let the kids be on their own and call to check on them because they can’t afford care,” Bott said.

This doesn’t happen just in families with teenagers. Sometimes elementary-age kids are sent home with a cell phone.

“A lot of families we have been seeing are sending kids to the public library after school because it’s warm. It’s safe. It’s supervised,” Bott explained. “The library system called us and said, ‘We have nothing to feed them. We have to feed these kids.”

You could be living in a child care desert. Here’s what that means

So the Utah Food Bank has been working with the Utah library system to provide a dinner meal to these children.

“We serve dinner in 11 public libraries five days a week because these kids have no place to go,” Bott said. “A public library should not be the answer to unaffordable daycare. A family should not have to choose to send a child home alone with an inexpensive phone. These families and children deserve safety and dignity and care and compassion.”

“If these were your children”

If you worked with feeding hungry families all over the state of Utah, you would be forgiven for feeling passionate about this issue.

“You can damn well bet if you were the person making the decisions and those were your children, you’d be looking at this through a whole different lens,” Bott said. “Forgive my passion, but I see these small, incredible little people that we’re serving. Daycare is becoming a frightening reality that so many families don’t have access to and shame on us.”

Not a single Utah county has an adequate number of licensed child care providers.

Only 36% of the state’s needs for child care are met. According to a report from Voices for Utah Children, two out of three families need both parents to work in order to afford housing and other basic needs.

“Let me give you an example,” Bott shared. “Young lady, nurse, makes $32/hour, has three children who have to be in daycare. They quoted her $28/hour. That leaves her $4. She has a job that pays a great wage. If she can’t afford it, those who make a lot less will never be able to afford it.”

Amanda Dickson is the co-host of Utah’s Morning News and A Woman’s View on KSL NewsRadio. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram. 

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The provost and vice president of student affairs at Southern Utah University has been named as the next president of Pennsylvania Western University, which has campuses in California, Clarion and Edinboro.

Jon Anderson, who also serves as a professor at the 15,000-student university in Cedar City, Utah, will take over the leadership of the State System of Higher Education university on July 1, succeeding R. Lorraine Bernotsky who will become president of West Chester University that same day. The 50-year-old Anderson’s salary has yet to be finalized, said State System spokesman Kevin Hensil.