Saving a drowning woman is all in a day's work for two boys who had already collected their swimming and lifesaving merit medals (功绩奖章).
A June heavy storm hit Columbia in Missouri with little warning, causing floodwaters from rivers to burst their banks and overflow zones to turn into ponds.
When 15-year-old Dominic Viet and 16-year-old Joseph Diener passed a basketball court that had turned into a pool, they heard the frantic shouting of a young woman desperately trying to keep her head above water under the force of a current. The boys had seen the girl swimming with a friend there before, but it was now obvious she was drowning.
"The first thing that came into my mind was to get into the water," Dominic recalled. "We didn't have time to think, her head was barely above the water and we could see her sinking more down every second. We didn't think about the risks, we had to get her out."
Heroes will do as heroes do, and pulling her up onto their shoulders, Dominic and Joseph got her ashore, where emergency services arriving at someone else's call performed first aid and rushed her to the hospital.
Floodwaters are no conditions to be swimming in. There can be waste water runoff, loose chemicals, downed power lines charging the current with electricity, or pieces of wood, metal, or brick, etc.
Assistant Fire Chief Jerry Jenkins described the boys' act as heroic and courageous. The fire department honored the two boys with a "Citizen Life Safety Award".
