Man on raft rescues teens caught by rip current
Published: August 3, 2006
As they struggled in Lake Michigan, Lynita Vaughn could see her teenage sons were in danger, so the Grand Rapids mother swam out to help them.
But she couldn’t pull them out of the rip currents sucking them away from the Grand Haven State Park beach.
Minutes later, Hudsonville resident Douglas Chapin maneuvered his inflatable raft over to the brothers, and Tory Wright, 19, and Richard Vaughn, 17, grabbed on.
“He’s the one that saved my boys,” Lynita Vaughn said. “I almost broke the man’s neck and drowned him … because I grabbed him, hugged him.”
The brothers got caught in a rip current around 7:10 p.m. Tuesday, Grand Haven Department of Public Safety officials said. When police arrived, the teens were out of the water and uninjured.
“A wave just came, and it took us way out there,” Wright said. “We were trying to go forward, and it was pushing us backwards.”
Chapin, 40, said he was at the pier with his family when he heard a cry.
“I saw these two heads way out past the swimming buoys,” he said. He guessed the teens were 50 to 75 yards past the boundary.
Chapin said other people at the beach were smiling as they watched the teens in trouble, thinking they were joking.
“They didn’t know it was the real thing,” he said.
If it weren’t for Chapin, Wright said, “we wouldn’t have got back to shore.”
Chapin said he doesn’t feel like a hero.
“I was just in the right place at the right time,” he said.
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