Onlooker dashes into California lake to help rescue drowning woman, video shows

Some people are calling Scott Wolfe a hero after the 56-year-old dashed into Lindo Lake to help save a drowning woman, but the Southern California man doesn’t see it that way.

“Never be afraid to do what you’re supposed to do,” he told KGTV. “I wasn’t going to go home and think about her dying without me doing anything.”

Wolfe, of Lakeside, had been standing alongside deputies and park rangers on the shore of the lake in a park, watching as a topless woman in the water shouted at officers Monday, Aug. 1, San Diego County sheriff’s officials told East County Magazine.

Deputies, who described the woman as being intoxicated, said she refused to come out of the water, KGTV reported. They were waiting for a crisis negotiator to arrive when Wolfe noticed the woman not moving face-down in the water.

“At the point she was down for 30 seconds, that’s where I walked down to the water and told the officers I was going in,” Wolfe told KFMB.

Deputies followed and helped Wolfe, who has a heart condition, pull the woman from the water, East County Magazine reported. They performed CPR on the shore and revived her.

“I was praying in my head, ‘God help us save her. God help us save her,’” Wolfe told KGTV. The woman was taken to a hospital and is expected to recover, sheriff’s officials said.

Wolfe has been praised as a hero on social media after a video shot by another bystander was posted online, East County Magazine reported. But he disagrees.

“It wasn’t some super hero who did this,” Wolfe told KFMB. “It was just a guy who’s a dad, who’s a son, a father, grandpa...and that is someone’s daughter, somebody’s sister, somebody’s mother, maybe. It was a human being.”

Lakeside is a community with a population of 21,000 northeast of San Diego.

This story was originally published August 4, 2022 at 8:42 AM with the headline "Onlooker dashes into California lake to help rescue drowning woman, video shows."