American Helps Pull Wife From Haitian Rubble

A former CBS employee made a mad dash from rural Haiti to its devastated capital yesterday just in time to assist workers in rescuing his wife, an aid worker, from the rubble of her organization’s headquarters. Frank Thorp was 100 miles away from Port-au-Prince—a 6-hour drive—when he felt a slight earthquake, but quickly heard that the capital had been much harder hit. So he jumped in his car.

“I wasn't really sure whether she was OK,” Thorp told the Early Show of his wife, Jillian, who works for the Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn. “I had spoken to her on Skype for about 10 seconds. She said she was trapped and that's all that I knew.” When he arrived on scene, Haitian workers had broken through the roof of the three-story building, which had collapsed entirely. “I jumped into the hole,” he says. “I couldn't hold it together, but all she was saying was, 'Just hold it together.’” She was trapped 10 hours with other employees of the diocese. (More Haiti earthquake stories.)