Can the Chile Miners Learn from Baby Jessica?

Twenty-three years ago, on Oct. 14, 1987, a similar story to that of the Chile miners unfolded.

In Midland, Texas, an 18-month-old named Jessica McClure had fallen 22 feet into a narrow eight-inch-wide abandoned well. Affectionately nicknamed "Baby Jessica," the toddler captured the attention of global media and the hearts of strangers as the world watched her ordeal on live TV and cheered her rescue 58 hours later.

With the miners' rescue under an equally bright media spotlight, they might have to overcome some obstacles to return their lives to normalcy.

Following Jessica's rescue, surgeons had to amputate part of her right foot due to circulation loss while in the well. Jessica had 15 surgeries in the coming years.

How did herfamily deal with her new-found fame? By keeping her out of the spotlight.

"That was better that I wasn't in the public while I was in school," Jessica, who has no recollection of the event, said in a 2007 Today Show interview.

Aside from the surgeries and scars which have mostly faded, Jessica went on to live a normal life, graduating high school in 2004. She married Daniel Morales in 2006, having a son named Simon with him. Next year, a trust fund donated by well-wishers around the time of her rescue worth $1 million or more awaits.

ABC made a 1989 TV movie about her story called "Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure".

Unfortunately, life didn't return to normal for others involved in Baby Jessica's rescue.

Jessica's parents, Lewis "Chip" McClure and Reba "Cissy" Porter, divorced in 1990.

Robert O'Donnell, the paramedic who squeezed down a rescue passageway and slathered petroleum jelly on the toddler before pulling her out of the well, shot and killed himself in 1995.

His brother, Rick, has said O'Donnell's life ''fell apart'' because of the stress of the rescue, the attention it created and the anticlimactic return to everyday life, reports a 2007 Associated Press article.

The AP also reported that a police officer who helped with the rescue, William Andrew Glasscock Jr., was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and improper storage of explosives in 2004. A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years on two state charges of sexual assault.

Jessica said in the 2007 Today Show interview she feels lucky to have survived the accident.

"Makes me feel lucky that I survived it and happy that I did," said Jessica. "That I could come back 20 year later and say hey it couldn't cage me then, why should it cage me now?"