Last week, the Brown County Sheriff’s department was able to rescue 34 people stranded on a piece of ice that had broken away from shore by using airboats fashioned after the first windsled Ice Angel. Introduced in the early 2000s, the Ice Angels were first conceptualized by Wisconsin Congressman David Obey. The idea began with a request from the Ashland Sheriff’s department following the death of a 16-year-old boy who had fallen through the ice in a snowmobiling accident where law enforcement could not do anything to save the boy. Congressman Obey then acquired the funds to create the first Ice Angel, a rudimentary airboat hybrid rescue vehicle. The boat is set in motion by airplane-like propellers to move the flat-bottomed boat over the ice that is too thin to safely operate a regular vehicle on. The introduction of this type of ice rescue was rough at best, with multiple people within the senate mocking the idea and calling it a waste of federal funds. This political debate brought publicity to the Ice Angels and caused many pictures and articles about the debacle. Luckily, the negative publicity worked in favor of the Ice Angels. Many law enforcement groups from around the Great Lakes reached out to Congressman Obey about acquiring such vehicles after seeing photos of them. Twenty years later, the Ice Angel legacy is still saving people stranded on ice, as we saw last week in Green Bay.