Man Mired in Quicksand Leaves Beach With New Girlfriend

A Michigan man who had a frightening day at the shore earlier this month at least has a new girlfriend to show for it. Mitchell O'Brien is now officially dating Breanne Sika after a two-year friendship, following their day trip to Van's Beach along Lake Michigan. On that expedition on April 12, the two friends—who both work in the alcohol recovery arena and recently started considering dating after a friend brought it up—were strolling along the beach looking for Leland Blue stones when Sika noticed that some of the sand didn't seem particularly stable, perhaps due to some nearby dredging, per the Detroit News.

"That looks really dangerous," O'Brien, 37, recalls the 36-year-old Sika saying—at which point he walked over to that spot and immediately was sucked into the sand up to his waist, just barely having time to get his phone and keys out of his pockets. "I knew not to panic," O'Brien tells the New York Times. "I have to be a macho man. You can't ask for help when you're trying to impress the girl you're with." Sika wasn't so much impressed as she was terrified, wondering if her pal would sink in so deep that the heavy sand would compress his chest and make it hard for him to breathe.

After 15 minutes or so of trying to get him out on their own, they called 911—at which point their relationship spontaneously moved to the next level. "I think my girlfriend is also trying to call," O'Brien told the dispatcher when he finally got through, at the exact same time that Sika, on her own phone, told a different 911 operator: "My boyfriend is stuck." "It was the first time we had called each other that," O'Brien said, per the Detroit News. Firefighters soon arrived and managed to get the uninjured but exhausted and shivering O'Brien out of his predicament in about 10 minutes.

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The newly annointed couple, meanwhile, seems content with their new status. "Two years of this guy being my best friend and just trying to hide ... how I felt, and he tried to die on me," Sika tells NBC News. "He becomes my boyfriend in the middle of it." Local officials have since posted signs on the beach warning others of the dangerous slurry from the dredging. (More quicksand stories.)