Senior Airman Jacob Holle and his family were about to leave a Florida beach on May 10 when they heard a woman screaming, “Save my husband!”
The man and two children were being pulled out to the ocean by a riptide, Holle said.
Holle took off his glasses and shoes and went into the water, not realizing how serious the situation was about to get.
It was Mother’s Day, so Holle had taken his wife, Chelsea, and his mother, Kim Duley, to Navarre Beach, off the Florida Panhandle, Holle told Air Force Times on Tuesday.
Holle, who is stationed at Hurlburt Field, had never been a rescue swimmer, but a fellow airman had taught him how to rescue a drowning victim during one of his unit’s rigorous PT sessions.
“That was really the only advice I had when I went out there and it was perfect for the situation,” he said.
He and another man swam between 40 and 50 yards to the man and his two children: a boy and girl, each between 10 and 14 years old, he said. Holle kept the girl above water, and that’s when he realized it was much deeper than he initially thought.
“I was standing on [the] bottom of the ocean floor and I had my hand fully extended and I was barely holding her above water, and I’m six-foot-two-[inches], so it had to be close [to] 10 feet deep where they were,” Holle said.
Holle and the other man quickly determined they could not rescue the father and the children in one attempt, so they would take the boy and girl ashore and then come back for the man, he said.
The father understood. The children did not.
“When I first got to her, I just tried to calm her and tell her: ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK. wWe’re here, we’re not that far from shore, we can get you in,’” Holle said. “When she heard that, she was screaming her dad’s name. She was fighting to go back out. I didn’t know what her goal was, but I just held on to her and pulled her in. And then she kind of realized she needed to help me get to shore so I could go back out.”
Holle and the other man got the children onto dry ground and Holle ran to the closest group of people to call 911. He also saw surfers near the father and was able to direct them to the father.
Things seemed to be under control, until Holle’s wife asked him a question.
“She said, ‘Where’s your mom at?’ ” Holle recalled. “I had no clue where my mom was.”
When Holle ran to find people to call 911, his 51-year-old mother decided to swim out to the father, he said.
“She’s not a swimmer by any means,” he said. “We grew up in Texas, so we don’t have a lot of ocean currents or anything. But she went out there and, in her words, she just helped hold him up. She saw the surfers coming, so she knew it wasn’t going to be too long.”
Even though the surfers were on their way, Holle felt panicked because he knew the rip current was too strong for her to be able to swim back on her own.
“It was Mother’s Day and my brother and sister were back in Texas and they knew she was there swimming in the ocean, having fun,” he said. “And I was thinking in my head: ‘I’m not going to lose my mom on Mother’s Day.’ “
Holle was about to swim out to her, but she gave him a thumb’s up. Soon, the surfers and lifeguards converged on her and the man.
“They didn’t know what the situation was,” Holle said. “They thought my mom was the one they were saving and the man rescued her. So they went to my mom first and my mom’s like, ‘No, no, no — go to the guy.’ “
Rescuers brought the man back to shore on a Sea-Doo and the two surfers brought Holle’s mother about halfway back, where Holle swam out to take her the rest of the way.
At least one of the three would have drowned had Holle not swam out to them, Capt. Sean Hughes of the Navarre Beach Fire Department told Air Force Times.
Coming to the aid of a drowning victim is dangerous because often the would-be rescuers drown, Hughes said.
It’s pretty heroic,” Hughes said. “A lot of times, no one does take action.”
