Justin Pacheco was boating with his family near John’s Pass near Madeira Beach on Florida’s West Coast on Saturday when he spied something strange in the water.
He recognized the nose of a capsized boat, and the off-duty Coast Guard helicopter pilot sprang into action, according to a Coast Guard news release and an article in the Tampa Bay Times.
He steered his own vessel toward the boat as it quickly sank below the surface and helped pull two Pinellas, Fla., residents out of the water while his family called 911.
The Coast Guard didn’t name the two people, but said one was a 51-year-old Clearwater man and the other a 39-year-old Seminole woman. Neither was injured, according to the news release. Boaters were warned to keep an eye out for the capsized boat because it still posed a hazard to navigation.
Pacheco, an MH-60 Jayhawk pilot for Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, shrugged off any suggestion that he had done something special, the Coast Guard said.
“That’s what any boater would do,” he was quoted as saying.
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