Bicyclist Says Thanks for River Rescue : Lifesaving: Joe Barnetson credits the firefighters who saved him from drowning in a fast-rushing creek. They even recovered his bicycle.

On Thursday, they rescued Joe Barnetson.

And on Friday, they rescued his bicycle--the bicycle that he believes helped save him from drowning in Bull Creek, or from being carried into the Los Angeles River channel that claimed a teen-ager’s life in a similar incident last month.

“I hung on to it as tight as I could,” said Barnetson, 20, of North Hills. He wore a blue Los Angeles Fire Department T-shirt while describing his ordeal at a news conference. “I think it slowed me down so they could see me.”

Barnetson, a special education student at Granada Hills High School, and his mother, Brenda Barnetson, thanked his Fire Department rescuers and the helicopter team that found his bicycle Friday morning in the Sepulveda Dam Basin.

He was pulled out of Bull Creek near Van Nuys Airport by a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter crew after he fell in near Lassen Street and Gothic Avenue.

He was pedaling over a bridge when his bike slid on a piece of wood and he fell into the rain-swollen creek--which, as is the river, is a flood-control channel lined with steep, smooth concrete walls that prevent escape from the current.

He was pulled out within minutes with only minor cuts and bruises, because of a series of lucky coincidences--starting with an off-duty Los Angeles police helicopter pilot working in his back yard who spotted Barnetson floating in the creek.

The pilot, Sgt. Jim Olmore of North Hills, called the direct phone number for the Fire Department’s Air Operations Unit at nearby Van Nuys Airport. The air unit’s helicopter had to fly only about 100 yards to the creek, where Fire Department Pilot Larry Harris and Firefighter David Mudd sighted Barnetson.

Barnetson saw them at the same time.

“I waved with one hand and hung on with the other,” he told a news conference at the department’s helicopter base at Van Nuys Airport.

The bicycle he was holding snagged branches and debris and slowed Barnetson sufficiently so that Mudd, lowered on a cable from the chopper, could ready himself downstream from Barnetson and grab him as he approached.

While relieved at his rescue, Barnetson was very worried about the bike.

“Joe wasn’t concerned about his own safety. He just kept talking about the bike,” said Pilot Pat Quinn, who helped get the soaked Barnetson into dry clothes on Thursday.

So Quinn and his partner, Randy Laur, decided to look for the bicycle when they went out on routine patrol Friday morning. Laur saw it submerged in Bull Creek about 150 yards south of Victory Boulevard, about two miles past the rescue point.

“It was covered with mud and plastic and branches and all kinds of garbage,” said Quinn, gesturing to the shiny bike, which he and other firefighters cleaned before returning it to Barnetson.

Barnetson mounted the bike, but said he was too sore to ride right away.

“I love riding my bike,” he said. “I’m going to be more careful about it.”