Fox Chase-based Boy Scouts
are true lifesavers

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

Every year at the Boy Scouts’ Frontier District Klondike Derby at Pennypack Park, Lawndale native Christopher Gallagher oversees the first-aid station.
That area of the skills competition requires youths to build a stretcher from tree limbs and clothing.
"I drilled my kids on that," said Gallagher, the scoutmaster for Fox Chase-based Troop 226.
On Oct. 20, the troop’s know-how came in handy.
While hiking the Appalachian Trail in Berks County that Saturday afternoon, Boy Scouts from that troop and a Girl Scout from the coed Venture Crew 226, encountered a bleeding and stumbling Jane Scholl, 41. The hikers learned that Scholl, of nearby Mohnton, had fallen several feet off a cliff while trying to take some pictures and appeared to have a concussion.
"She was really staggering and disoriented," said Gallagher, who now lives in Wyncote, Montgomery County.
Scholl and a companion planned to make the six-mile walk back to their car, but the Scouts doubted that the injured hiker could handle it. So, eight of them used their sweatshirts and found some sturdy tree limbs, and within minutes fashioned a stretcher on which to take Scholl to help. They began the two-and-a-half-mile, hour-long trek back down the mountain, switching positions every few minutes to let someone rest.
"We just kept her conscious," Abington resident Billy Bowman, 14, said of Scholl.
During the journey, two couples not affiliated with the Scouts helped carry the stretcher for a bit. Andrew C. Swartz, an assistant scoutmaster whose son, Andrew W., was part of the rescue, later learned that others saw Scholl in distress, but ignored her.
"Twenty people walked right by her and didn’t help out," said Swartz, a paramedic who lives in Cheltenham, Montgomery County.
The troop got Scholl to a clearing where paramedics, who took some time in getting their vehicle up the trail, began treating her. Scholl was airlifted to an area hospital.
The Scouts, who said they were not weary after their adventure, then found out that a news outlet was waiting to interview them in the camp parking lot — three miles away. Apparently, several family members had called the news station after the Scouts had phoned home to tell them about their experience.
Gallagher suspects that had Scholl continued trying to walk down the mountain, she would have fallen again and lost consciousness. The group reunited with the hiker on NBC’s The Today Show, based in New York City, on Tuesday.
"She was like a different person," Swartz, the assistant scoutmaster, said.
Incredibly, Gallagher, the scoutmaster, experienced another life-or-death situation at the same spot on the Appalachian Trail 10 years ago. That time, an obese man was having a diabetic emergency, so the Scouts on that trip gave him sugar to keep him going until paramedics arrived.
In using first aid and wilderness skills this time around, the Scouts practiced about three merit badges’ worth of experience in carrying Scholl to safety. But to them, they were applying their knowledge.
"We were just doing our job," said Chris Gallagher’s 14-year-old daughter, Megan. ••
For more information on Troop 226, visit http://bsatroop226.org/
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com