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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. At most times of the year, there is no river in the Santa Fe River. It’s a tributary of smooth stone and dried muck, a stream of silt winding its way through the historical heart of the city different and dry.
But on an afternoon nearly 63 years ago, swift waters rushed along the channel, clear and cool, deep enough to drown a small child.
Which on that May 5, 1958, it very nearly did.
It’s a story Larry Malin rarely heard growing up, even though it was his father who was credited with jumping into the river to save that child, a 3-year-old girl named Donna Lee Vigil.