Fourteen-year-old Jory Thomas was spending the Fourth of July weekend with his grandparents along Montana’s Yellowstone River when he heard desperate cries for help.
A group had been knocked into the water after striking a bridge pier, and while three people reached shore, one man was being swept away while clinging to a cooler.
In a rescue straight out of an old Western, Jory convinced the man to release the cooler and threw a lasso and caught him around the arm and neck with his very first throw as his mom watched nearby.
With help from a bystander, he pulled the man safely to shore before the current carried him toward dangerous rapids and logjams.