Senior Master Sgt. Steph Schwarz, combat flight engineer, 920th Rescue Wing, Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., responded swiftly to save two teens who were critically injured when their personal watercraft slammed into his backyard wooden boat dock.(U.S. Air Force photo/Maj. Cathleen Snow)
Senior Master Sgt. Steph Schwartz didn’t think twice when a personal watercraft crashed into his backyard boat dock in Satellite Beach, Florida, Sunday, critically injuring two.
The reservist with the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base leaped into action — an impulsive response he credits to 27 years in Air Force rescue, according to a news release from his wing.
Schwartz was inside around 2 p.m. Jan. 4 when he heard a crash “loud enough to make me jump out of my chair,” he said in the news release. The combat flight engineer ran outside, where he saw an injured man lying on his boat dock. The man pointed Schwartz’s attention to a woman floating face down in the canal behind his home.
Schwartz shouted to his son to call 911 before pulling the unconscious woman’s face out of the water and waking her. She began to hyperventilate, he said, and Schwartz attempted to calm her.
Rescue workers arrived about five minutes later, according to the news release. The man and woman, both 19, were taken to the hospital with critical injuries.
Schwartz said he has learned both are expected to recover. You can read the Air Force story here.
