Olympic Gold medalist Bode Miller and his wife Morgan are reaching out on social media in their mission to help prevent child drownings.
The Millers lost their 19-month-old daughter on June 10, 2018, when she drowned in a Coto de Caza swimming pool.
The devastated couple has decided to include a heartbreaking image of their daughter as part of their message.
On Friday, Aug. 17, they published a photo of the little girl, Emeline, hooked up to tubes at Children’s Hospital of Orange County before she died.
“I wish I could have one more day to hold you, but until that day comes, continue to work through me and give me the strength to bring awareness, my love,” Morgan Beck Miller wrote in her Instagram post. “I told you as I held you in this moment that you could still change the world, you could still move mountains. Every step we take forward is because of you and Levi. Your footprint will forever be left on this world. I love you, My baby girl.”
The reference to Levi was Levi Hughes, a three-year-old boy from Tennessee who drowned on the same day.
The Millers first spoke publicly about their daughter’s death on NBC’s “Today” in late July, seven weeks after the accident.
Morgan Miller said they were at a neighbor’s home when she realized it had gotten too quiet, and that Emmy was missing.
“I opened the door and she was floating in the pool,” she told Savannah Guthrie, in tears. “And I ran and I jumped in.”
Morgan Miller pulled her daughter out of the water and began CPR. A neighbor called 911.
At first, doctors were hopeful the child could survive, the Millers said. But Emmy died the next day.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t pray for the opportunity to go back to that day and make it different,” Morgan Miller said. “But now we have this opportunity to make other parents’ days different.”
In the past couple of months, the couple has posted photos of the little girl in happy times.
“I often find myself wanting to reach into videos and pictures and just pull you out,” Morgan Miller wrote. “Searching for ways to bring you back so our family is whole again. So our hearts are whole again. We miss you so much, my love.”
In another post, she said, “We talk about vaccinations, car seats, organic foods, screen time, etc at length…but not the number one risk your childrens’ lives face…a silent killer. It takes SECONDS. Please share and help us spread awareness. It’s the first step to preventing these types of tragedies.”
After birth defects, drowning is the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among children ages 1-14, drowning is the second leading cause of death after motor vehicle accidents.
In Orange County, five children under age 5 drowned and 12 children in that age group nearly drowned from Jan. 1 to Aug. 15, 2018, according to figures provided by Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Carlos Huerta.
On Saturday, Aug. 18, he added, a 2-year-old boy fell into a hotel spa in Westminster. The boy was pulled from the bottom of the spa by his mother and was breathing, but paramedics took him to a hospital for further evaluation, Huerta said.
Numbers that would provide a comparison to drownings last year at this point were not immediately available.
The Millers are expecting another baby this fall and have two other children.
Publicly mourning their daughter and spreading their message is “an obligation to some degree,” Bode Miller told Guthrie. “I think it does, in some way, help to heal a little bit, that maybe we’re preventing it from happening to somebody else.”
Bode Miller is a six-time Olympic medalist in skiing. He won gold in the super combined at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. He last competed at the 2014 Olympics.
Morgan Beck Miller has been a professional beach volleyball player and model.
