Local divers come to the rescue after kayaker loses prosthetic leg in Alberta’s Chestermere Lake

Last Sunday, Joe Davis, 50, flipped his kayak on Chestermere Lake, a manmade reservoir in Chestermere, Alberta.

A Good Samaritan spotted him struggling in the water and helped Davis back to shore on a ski-boat.

What didn’t make it back, however, was Davis’ custom prosthetic leg.

“He just got blown over, and he was trying to hold the boat, because he was thinking it would sink — so he removed his prosthetic leg because he thought he might be swimming back to shore,” John Kittler, owner of Hyperactive Watersports in Chestermere, who helped with Davis’ rescue, told the Calgary Sun.

Somehow Davis’ leg was dropped in the process of Davis being towed back to shore.

“He was pretty distraught because it’s the only one he has, they take weeks to make, and they cost five thousand bucks,” said Kittler.

“And so, at the time it was windy and cold, so we couldn’t even go out to look.”

Davis went home without his leg, assuming it was lost forever.

Fortunately for Davis, the good people of Chestermere weren’t about to let his leg sit at the bottom of the lake.

The next day, as news of the sunken leg spread, Scott Taylor and Sabrina and Matt Wyse, three expert scuba divers, arrived on the scene to help. They used Kittler’s surveillance of Davis’ kayak flip to help pinpoint the location of the leg and developed a search pattern. Sure enough, they found the leg straight down from where Davis last had it.

Davis and his wife, Billi, watched the divers’ successful search from the shore.

“What a truly great day. Again, I cannot express how blessed we feel. Dockside, John, you rock! Scott, Sabrina Wyse and Matt. Thank you. Just, thank you. My heart is big,” wrote Davis on the I Love Chestermere Facebook page.

“We cannot feel anymore grateful.”

“This is such a great feel-good story — I mean, you couldn’t have scripted this any better for a Hollywood movie,” said Kittler.