Philly Lawyer Helps Save Drowning Kids, Would-Be Rescuer
A Philadelphia lawyer who helped save three people from drowning off the coast of New Jersey attributes the rescue to a series of chance circumstances.
Sam Pond, a workers compensation lawyer with Martin Banks Pond Lehocky & Wilson, received a key to the city in Key Isle, N.J., because of his involvement in the rescue on June 26, the Legal Intelligencer reports.
The story summarizes the chain of events that day. Pond took his kayak to the beach because his wife urged him to go there to keep an eye on a neighbor who wanted to surf. He brought a life jacket because of a conversation he had earlier that day about he had rescued two people stranded on a sandbar. After Pond took to the water, a fisherman yelled, alerting Pond that two boys were in trouble. By the time Pond paddled over, a man had swum out to help the boys, but the younger one was pulling the man underwater.
Pond threw his life jacket to the man, managed to calm the younger boy, 10-year-old Brian Wolf, and pulled him into the kayak. The older boy, 13-year-old Peter Wolf, held onto a boat line as Pond took them to safety. Then he went back to retrieve the man with the life vest.
Pond said the man who swam to the boys was the real hero. “I clearly think he’s the guy who really had a lot of guts to go out there without anything buoyant,” Pond said. “He didn’t miss a beat.”
