CULPEPER, Va. — Three teens who were supposed to be trying out for their high school golf team turned into rescuers when they realized that a family’s kayaks had overturned.
The teens, identified as Andrew Tuggle, 15; Jackson Castro, 17; and Gavin Cain, 17, are all members of the Eastern View High School golf team and were at the Culpeper Country Club near Lake Culpeper, in Virginia, on July 27.
Castro said, “We heard a big splash in the water,” WTTG reported.
“All of a sudden there was a little boy, you hear a little boy screaming,” Cain said.
“The adult was holding up the kid, but then he’s bopping up and down, and they started screaming help in Spanish,” Castro added.
While their teammates called 911 and told their coaches what happened, the trio jumped into the lake, swam to the family, who were all in life jackets, and brought them back to shore.
They also retrieved the boats.
The lake had a “steep, overgrown hillside with a boulder-strewn shoreline,” police said, making the rescue difficult.
By the time professional first responders got to the scene, the family, which was made up of two adults and a young child, was all safely on shore. The child did not know how to swim, according to WJLA.
Police, using drones, made sure no one else was in the lake, WUSA reported.
“These three young men saw someone in danger and acted immediately, without hesitation, at potentially great personal risk to themselves,” Culpeper police Chief Chris Settle said, according to WRC. “That kind of courage and quick thinking is what saved three lives on Monday.”
Coach Patrick Thornhill said of his team, “The instinct and courage these young men showed to jump into action and save lives is heroic. I could not be prouder of them.”
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