'Diff'rent Strokes' star saves woman's life

LOS ANGELES
(April 14, 2001 11:05 a.m. EDT) - Todd Bridges, the once-troubled actor who played the older brother Willis on the TV sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," was credited Friday with saving a paraplegic woman whose wheelchair rolled into a lake.

Stella Kline said the electric wheelchair lurched into the Balboa Park Lake in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday after her fishing line caught on the chair's controls. When it tipped over in 3 feet of water, she was trapped underneath.

Bridges, whose run-ins with the law made him a tabloid favorite in the mid-'80s and '90s, was fishing a few feet away with his brother James, 40. Both jumped in to help.

"I was thanking God that he was there," said Kline, 50. "And you know, everybody's been saying nothing but bad stuff about Todd Bridges on the news and in the papers ... He has a heart of gold."

Bridges, 35, who starred with Gary Coleman in the sitcom, 1978-1986, was nonchalant.

"We felt God put us there at the right time to save this lady's life, because there was no one else around," he said.

News Copyright © 2001 Interest!ALERT

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