Devon Dodd, an incredible 14-year-old South Afri-CAN received an award from the National Sea Rescue Institute on Monday after he saved a stranger.
Knysna, South Africa (20 August 2015) – The Grade 8 pupil who received the “Waterwise Academy Recognition Award”, was surfing at Buffalo Bay, Knysna, on April 27, when he saw a man get knocked over by a wave and sucked into a current.
“He was saying ‘help, help’, and I could see he couldn’t swim,” Dodd explained.
The teenager said he had to help because he could see the man was in trouble.
“My mom taught me saving techniques, which came in handy in rescuing the man.”
Devon said that when he left the man on the shore he thought that was the end of it, but the next day it was all over social media.
Getting the award was an amazing but humbling experience.
“I did not expect that it would be this big a deal. People sometimes come up to me and say well done.”
Originally, Dodd never even told his mother Jacqui about the rescue. She found out about it from a photographer called Milly Adams, who happened to be there and had put the pictures on her Facebook.
She said she phoned Devon the next day, while he was at school, and said to him: “Hey dude, you saved somebody’s life, and he said ‘ja, cool hey’.”
She said at the time that when she wanted him to do chores around the house, he joked he did not have to because he was a hero.
Devon, whose passions are kiteboarding, kitesurfing, surfing and motorcycling said that he was now thinking of becoming a “Nipper youth lifesaver”.
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