This past Tuesday at around 8:15AM, Ryan Gordon heard a crash outside of his office that sits along Pacific Coast Highway at the Seal Beach border. Peeking through his blinds to see if an accident had occurred, he saw the tail end of a truck slowly sinking into the San Gabriel River.
Going into an instinct mode, Gordon—a financial advisor for Wells Fargo—bolted across the parking lot, ditching his shoes and climbing down the rock embankment to dive in to swim towards the floating truck.
“I swam to the truck and saw a guy inside trying to get out,” Gordon explained. “He was trying to get the window down but couldn’t because it was electric. Couldn’t open the passenger door—seemed like the whole electric system was shot.”
Desperate to escape the vehicle, the man—currently only identified as a resident of Calabasas—attempted to escape the manual rear window but was only able to achieve in getting his head and one shoulder out. During this entire time, the truck was slowly losing its ability to float and was beginning to sink.
“I didn’t know what to do—he wasn’t going to get out,” said Gordon, after explaining failed attempts to kick out the windows.
In an aligning of luck and fate, Seal Beach construction manager Keith Dodson was jogging nearby and joined in on the effort. A blend of instinct and smart thinking caused Dodson to grab a rock, which he used to break the window. By this point, water had reached a level about a quarter way up the window and with the third punch, the breaking of the window caused a quick influx of water that acted as a deadweight on the truck.
Both diving down, Dodson was able to successfully get inside the vehicle and pull the victim out.
The act of heroism, at least for Gordon, was anything but. It was a thing of simple humanity.
“It was random. I just heard it, saw it, and bolted down there. Luckily Keith was able to grab a rock because I simply don’t know if we would’ve been able to break the window without it—it was lookin’ pretty grim before he swam up with the rock,” said Gordon. “It was intense but it was more surreal than anything. But I don’t see myself as a hero or anything… Anyone would’ve done that.”
While it is questionable that “anyone would’ve done that,” there is no question that such acts should never go by overlooked.