What started as a shuttle drop-off on Grand Isle turned into a rescue in rough water.
Reliant Shuttle driver Jordan Matthew told Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana in an interview published on 15 June that he had just dropped off a group of tourists from Oklahoma at a beach on Grand Isle days earlier when one of them frantically flagged him down.
Matthew said he was told a young boy had been caught in a rip current. A woman, whom he said appeared to be a relative of the child, then went in to try to save him but was pulled in by the current herself. Matthew said a third member of the group was also caught as she swam nearby.
He told WWL he could see that “they were bobbing under, [and] the waves were crashing over their heads” at the edge of the Elmer’s Island wildlife refuge.
“It was a rough sight,” he said.
Matthew, who said he has no formal lifeguard training, ran into the water. He first pulled the boy and one of the women to a shallower spot, then led them to shore. He then swam back out to the other woman after she had drifted farther away, grabbed her and brought her back to shore, carrying her over his shoulder at one point.
The Mandeville, Louisiana, native, whose hometown is about 120 miles from the refuge, described his mindset to WWL.
“There’s this thing I call ‘absolute focus’,” Matthew said. “I activated that in my mind, just locked in, and went one by one [to] get them.”
He said he told the people he rescued to stay calm so they would not “run out of energy” in the water, and said he “didn’t really have too many thoughts going”.
In a viral social media post on 13 June, Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said: “Thanks to Jordan’s decisive action, all three individuals made it safely out.”
The department also offered “a big thank you to … Matthew for his quick thinking and heroic actions”.
“His willingness to act in a critical moment made all the difference,” the department said. “Thank you, Jordan, for your courage, selflessness, and commitment to helping others.”
Matthew said he was relieved the tourists were physically fine, though emotionally shaken, and said they invited him to dinner to thank him.
The department also quoted Matthew, warning about the strength of tidal currents and how people unfamiliar with them can underestimate them.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines rip currents as narrow channels of water moving rapidly away from shore. It says rip currents are involved in about 100 deaths each year, and says people caught in one can get out most safely by swimming parallel to shore and returning to land at an angle, rather than swimming straight toward it.
Matthew told WWL: “If there’s calm water, there’s bound to be a rip [current].”
Read more from The Guardian.
