"It was the perfect storm for a drowning," recalled his mother. "Because we had a lot of children, we had a lot of activity. It was a special event. He was a male, he was under 2. All the statistics were really right for him to have an accident."
His accident happened at his grandparents house, during his father's 40th birthday. About a dozen children under the age of 8 milled around while the adults BBQ'd. The dog barking alerted family members to the small boy submerged in a hot tub. His grandfather pulled him out by his feet. Amy remembers her son's skin was blue, his body limp. By all accounts, he was dead.
Family members performed CPR while they waited what seemed like ages - in reality about two minutes - for emergency crews to arrive. Somewhere between pulling him out of the water and arriving at the hospital, Adam's heart started again. He was out of the hospital a week later.
He now plays football and baseball. His mother defines him as her son, an athlete, and then as a near-drowning survivor.
"We came out on the best side," said Amy, "and I can't fathom what it is like to come out on the worst side."
Another family is going through the worst side now. A four year old went under the water at the Madison Apartment complex pool Sunday, despite a mother and family nearby. Hours later, he died.
Ronda Lusk at SafeKids Kansas works to prevent such stories from happening. She advises, "if you have kiddos swimming, make sure you always have one person watching the water, no matter where you're at."
The national organization Safe Kids says most children under the age of five drown in home swimming pools. And a national survey shows almost 90% of child drowning deaths happen with a parent or caregiver nearby.
Amy Chesser weighed in on it all. "When I see other people talk about, like, if they read the story from this weekend, they'll say 'Well, why didn't those parents or why didn't this or why didn't that?' There's a real tendency to blame out there. When really, that's too late."
Chesser knows she is one of the lucky ones, and one of the few.
The Kansas Department of Health and the Environment says 66 children in Kansas drowned in 2007 and 2008 (the most recent statistics available). Studies show males are almost twice as likely to drown as females.
