This takes balls!

**Pakman3000** · 07-19-2010, 23:11

A former San Dimas High School water polo player put his swimming skills to good use in the U.S. Coast Guard recently, rescuing four fishermen from a burning boat in the treacherous waters off Kodiak, Alaska.
The sight of Coast Guard rescue swimmer Christopher Moore descending from a helicopter turned a life-and-death situation into a "beautiful day," said one of the fishermen in a videotaped interview.

With their 52-foot-long boat engulfed in flames, the four men took to a small life raft July 11, according to the Coast Guard.

"We just waited for the Coast Guard to pick us up," said Joe Macinko, the fishing boat's captain in a videotaped interview just after his rescue. "Awfully glad they made it - it's awfully lonely out there."

Moore swam through 8-foot waves and 25 mph winds, taxiing the fishermen one by one between the life raft and the helicopter's hoist cable.

"On my way from the helicopter to the raft, it felt like I was swimming up river," Moore said. "The current was so strong I didn't even notice the waves or the wind."

The 1998 graduate of San Dimas High School said he first fell in love with swimming on the school's water polo team.

"That was really my first introduction to swimming," Moore said. "It became a huge part of my life."

After successfully completing a four-year stint in the Marine Corps, Moore said he became bored by civilian life and set his sights on something a little more challenging.

"The Coast Guard rescue swimmers are the best of the best. There's only about 400 in the entire nation," Moore's father, Mike Moore, said.

"It was a lofty goal for him," he said.

But before the 30-year-old father of two could leave his high-paying job at a local water company behind, he had to convince his wife.

Moore's wife was initially reluctant to let her husband join a military program that most men drop out of in training. But with the alternate possibility of Moore re-enlisting in the Marines and going to war, she agreed.

"It was a pretty huge commitment, coming out of a job where I was making $70,000 a year, to make half that in a program that has a 70 percent attrition rate," Moore said. But "she got on-board."

Moore said he hopes the high-seas rescue will be his first of many.

"We've done a lot of medical rescues," Moore said. But "this is the first time I got in the water to save people."

http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_15551691?source=rss

This takes alot of sacrifice. To leave that money and have a supporting spouse like that says alot.