In the haze of a hot August morning, the clutch of TV cameras converging on 4-year-old Sophia Boscariol were getting exactly nowhere.

Was her 17-year old sister, Rebekah, less than an hour away from finishing an overnight swim across Lake Ontario, her hero? “I don’t know,” she said, squirming shyly. Did she think she was brave? “I don’t know.” Strong? Tired? “I don’t know.”

Cajoling a media-friendly comment from a bashful 4-year-old is never an easy task, but Sophia’s reaction as Rebekah, exhausted and blue-lipped as she hoisted her weary body onto the boardwalk at Toronto’s Marilyn Bell Park Saturday, said it all. The little girl smiled, a little awestruck, as she offered a pink and yellow towel to her big sister, who began to shake off the effects of almost 16 hours in the water.

She had started in Niagara-on-the-Lake at 8:45 p.m. Friday — almost six hours late, the product of choppy waters that threatened to scupper the swim entirely. But Rebekah wasn’t having it.

“The waves were huge,” said Colleen Shields, Rebekah’s official swim master from Solo Swims Ontario, charged with monitoring her mental and physical state. “I wanted to cancel it. She didn’t. So we went ahead.”

Rebekah’s determination was well-founded. Sophia had surgery to repair a hole in her heart at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on July 19.

The condition is common, and in Sophia’s case, not life-threatening, but for Rebekah, the 52-kilometre swim was an opportunity to give back. She set a goal of raising $20,000 for the hospital. As of Saturday afternoon, she had raised a little more than $12,000.

Over the night, she made up her lost time. Her grandmother, Anne Boscariol, was tracking her progress on Twitter, which was being updated from Rebekah’s guide boat throughout the night. Rebekah’s pace was near-record, and she’d be landing on the Toronto shore sometime around noon. “We thought it was a mistake,” Anne said. “We had to scramble to get here in time.”

At just over 15-and-a-half hours, the Markham teen was one of the fastest female swimmers to make the crossing since 16-year old Marilyn Bell first did it on Sept. 9, 1954. According to Solo Swims, she’s the 55th person to successfully traverse the lake since. Many more have tried and failed. Shields, 59, has completed it twice; she’s come close, but not quite, on four other tries.

There’s a current that spills out of the Humber River, she explained, that pushes swimmers east just as they near the end of their gruelling ordeal. When the current is strong, “it doesn’t matter how much energy you have,” she says. “You’re not going anywhere.”

For a moment Saturday morning, Rebekah seemed stuck, but Shields was never concerned. “She’s a spitfire,” she said. “For me, there was never any doubt.”

Just before noon, Rebekah broke through. Exhausted but still churning out 60 strokes of front crawl per minute, she gutted her way to shore. “As a little girl, she used to dream of swimming the Pacific Ocean,” said her aunt, Marybeth McTeague. “A few years ago, she settled on Lake Ontario, and here we are.”

Shortly after noon, her white bathing cap came into clear focus as she swam in past the breakwaters. “Holy smokes. Holy smokes!” McTeague said, rushing to the orange ladder where her niece would emerge a few minutes later. A cheer went up from Rebekah’s aunts, uncles and cousins: “Go Rebekah go!”

When she pulled herself from the water, the official timekeeper stopped the clock: 15 hours, 33 minutes, 15 seconds — 23 minutes off the official women’s record of 15:10, set by Cindy Nicholas in 1974.

But that mattered not a bit as Rebekah huddled in an orange and silver space blanket, TV cameras shoved in her face. “I can’t believe I did it,” she effused, wide-eyed. Was it cold? “It was actually really warm,” she said; the temperature was hovered around 21C. “That helped.” Was she hungry, after 15 hours of only Gatorade and chicken broth fortified with carbohydrate powder? “Yes!” What did she want to eat? “Everything! I’m really hungry.”

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A laugh, and the horde dispersed. Rebekah’s friends and family gathered around. Hugs and tears ensued. “You look frozen,” said Lochlan McTeague, her 8-year-old cousin. “You’re pale white like a vampire!” Rebekah laughed. “I’m really hungry,” she said, sniffling back a few tears. “I still can’t believe I did it.”

A web site for donation and information can be found at http://www.swimthedistance.com/