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Mrs. Rehm arrived at the Androscoggin River in Maine just before dawn one day in order to stake out her ideal salmon-fishing spot. Her timing was incredibly fortunate for a pair of teenage boys who had decided to go for a night dive in the river. After entering the water, the teenagers had found themselves sucked into strong currents and carried away from the bank via the rapids. Their nightmare river ride forced them beneath the surface and battered them with rocks, logs, and debris. By the time Rehm spotted them, the teens had drifted seven miles from their point of entry.
As Rehm was preparing her first cast of the day, she saw the two swimmers struggling in the rapids approximately 100 feet from shore. Rehm knew that swimming against the current drains energy at an exponentially higher rate than swimming in still water. So without another thought she plunged into the river and swam with the current until she passed the floundering teenagers. Then she turned, angled her body, and resisted the current enough to stabilize herself. When one of the swimmers floated nearby, Rehm was able to grab his hair. She brought the boy to a high rock near the bank and hauled him out of the water to safety. She then plunged back into the roiling river in pursuit of the other floundering form.
By this time, the rush of the current had been compounded by the pull of a nearby electrical turbine dam. After diving back in, Rehm again swam with the current and passed the second struggling diver. As she turned back, she saw the diver's head strike a rock and his body appear to go limp. Rehm fought her way back upriver and managed to snare him as he went by. Cupping the now-unconscious diver under the chin, the heroic rescuer stroked with one arm toward the bank. She had to literally heave his body up out of the water and onto a fallen tree trunk; unfortunately, the force of this throw sent Mrs. Rehm back into the river, where she was pulled under by the ferocious current generated by the turbine dam.
Witnesses' accounts say Rehm remained underwater for seven to 10 minutes. The current kept her fully submerged, swirling her in so many directions that later Rehm said she could not tell which way the riverbank lay. A countercurrent miraculously pushed her under the turning turbines, saving her body from being shredded by or pinned beneath the turbine apparatus. She then was sucked up and over the turbine wall, then fell 200 feet off the man-made waterfall. By drawing on a reserve of energy characteristic of the unbreakable, Rehm somehow found the strength to swim across a quarter mile of gentle rapids to a turbine maintenance ladder, which she used to bring herself out of the river. Joggers who witnessed the incident in progress had already summoned the assistance of a park ranger, who picked her up. The ranger rushed the two teenagers and Mrs. Rehm to a hospital.
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