Positivity: Boy Saves Two Swimmers

From Australia:

23.04.2007

A KAWANA boy is being hailed a hero after saving the lives of two swimmers on a deserted Coast beach.

Thirteen-year-old Scott Williams was surfing alone on Friday afternoon when he saw the pair hanging on to a boogie board and obviously in trouble, 150 metres from shore.

The Year 9 student realised the beach’s lifeguard patrol had packed up for the day and, with darkness falling, decided he “just had to do what it took”.

He paddled over to the pair but after unsuccessful attempts to load them onto his surfboard, he paddled to shore for a rescue board.

As his nipper training kicked in, Scott loaded one of the men onto the board and took him back into shore before heading out to rescue the second man.
Hampering the rescue was the fact the men were both Asian and spoke little English, so Scott couldn’t tell them what he needed them to do.
“I put one on the board – he was the smaller one – and took him in,” he said.

“Then I went back out to get the other one and he was big. I struggled a bit with him.”

By the time he went back out to rescue the second man, a crowd had begun to gather on the beach.

Another swimmer went out to try and calm the panicked tourist while Scott attempted to load him onto the board.

“I managed to get him on but he was quite big and it was hard to hold him on,” he recalled.

“The waves rolled us and we came off, but I got him back on again.

“Then another wave came and we fell off again and I lost the board.”

Kawana Waters Surf Life Saving Club manager Bob Lane saw the drama and swam out with a rescue tube.

Together, they recovered the board and managed to bring the second man back safely to shore – just 20 minutes after Scott had first noticed the trouble.

“My heart was just beating like a million miles an hour when we got back in. I was heaps tired from trying to paddle them in,” he said.

“I couldn’t have done it without Bob Lane, but he just congratulated me and called me the light weight champion of the surf.”

Mr Lane played down his role in the rescue, instead heaping praise on the pint-sized hero.

“I can’t speak highly enough about the way he acted. He did everything exactly right,” he said.

“He is exactly what we are trying to produce in surf lifesaving.”

Scott’s father Jim, a nipper swim coach, said he was “amazed” by his son’s actions.