‘It was a time for action’

Jeffrey L. Hamera doesn’t think he did anything unusual.

He’s the only one.

Hamera, a construction law litigator at Duane, Morris LLP, helped save a woman’s life last Thursday after the woman — despondent following multiple deaths in her family — attempted to commit suicide by jumping into the Chicago River.

After exiting Union Station on Adams Street shortly before noon, Hamera was walking over the bridge to his LaSalle Street office when he heard a splash in the river.

“I turned around and looked, and at first I couldn’t tell what it was,” he said. “There was a trail of snow falling off the edge … but then I looked down in the river and saw the woman pop up in the water.”

A stream of commuters had exited Union Station, and now people were shouting from the bridge, pointing to the woman in the water. Once Hamera saw her, he knew he had to move fast.

“I figured that since it was cold (and) the water was cold, that she wouldn’t have too much time,” he said, referring to the hypothermia that would have soon set in.

“I saw that she … needed help, and I knew that I could get down there quickly enough. At that point, you have to act more than planning or thinking about it. You have to start doing something. It was a time for action.”

Familiar with the river and the bridge, Hamera raced to an access stairway on Jackson Boulevard. He called 911, spoke with the fire department and climbed down the stairs to the river level. When he got there, two city employees working by the river were already beginning a rescue.

“She looked scared,” he said. “It was pretty clear she was trying to save herself at that point.”

The woman was flailing. She was trying to swim to a support pier, but there was no way up. While the workers steadied her with a piece of piping from a construction site, Hamera talked to her to make sure she was coherent.

She wasn’t swimming, he said. She was just trying to hold on.

Video footage taken by a civilian on the scene shows two city workers — Butch Kazich and Derek Lamb — standing on the platform pulling the woman from the river. The footage also features Hamera.

“I grabbed (the preserver) and lowered it down to the woman, and she grabbed on,” he said. “One of the contractors walked her to a staircase, and I was at that point holding the rope and trying to stay out of the way, making sure the contractor didn’t trip over the rope.”

Once they reached the stairwell, Kazich and Lamb climbed down to pull her out. Lamb gave her his winter cap, while Hamera wrapped her in his overcoat. The fire department arrived soon after.

“They loaded her up onto a chair and a stretcher kind of thing and took her up to the ambulance,” Hamera said. “And that was pretty much it. I went back to finish my commute.”

When he got to Duane, Morris, he was enthusiastic.

“He was excited and kind of proud of himself,” said Hamera’s assistant, Valerie Moore. “He walked in and said, ‘There was a jumper today.’ … And he told the story.”

Despite his initial ebullience, Hamera tried to keep a low profile at work. But the story spread around the office, and soon he was getting congratulations from co-workers.

Even if he’d wanted to keep his good deed to himself, the evidence was hanging in his office.

His coat was drying.

“I had to take my coat to the cleaners because it had Chicago River water on it, but after that I kind of went back to business as usual,” he said.

For Hamera, helping others is business as usual. Since 2007 he has traveled to other countries with Engineers Without Borders (EWB), a nonprofit that supports, “community-driven development programs worldwide,” its website says.

His work with EWB is the reason his co-workers were not surprised to hear about his rescue.

“This is certainly within Jeff’s character to help someone,” said David B. Yelin, a partner at Duane, Morris who has worked with Hamera for close to a decade. “He goes on these missions once a year. … He has pictures where he is standing on a water pipe they’ve built.”

Still, Hamera prefers downplaying any notion of heroism. When he got home that night, his family was proud of him, though they too had other interests.

His wife was “as much concerned about the woman as anything else,” he said, while his sons, 19 and 16, were more interested that he was on TV, regardless of the reason.

That’s the way Hamera wants to keep it.

“It was, oddly, matter-of-fact,” he said. “You see someone who needs some help, you give them some help, and you go back to doing what you’re doing.”

Words to live by.