GNN: Teen Uses Lasso To Save Drowning Man

by Kevin Burton

   Whatever skillset you have, you can use it for good just when a neighbor needs it most.

   That’s the theme of today’s stories from the Good News Network.

   The more troubling, heartbreaking news must be covered. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and ignore reality. But it sure is good to get a ray of sunshine from GNN once in a while, isn’t it?

  This first story, reported by Andy Corbley, comes from Bis Sky country in Montana, where a self-described “ranch kid” used a ranch skill to save a man’s life.

   “A 14-year-old obsessed with roping cattle rescued a man who’d fallen into a river Indiana Jones-style, catching him around the neck and arm with his lasso.”

   “Jory Thomas was spending 4th of July weekend at his grandparents’ house along the Yellowstone River near Greycliff, in Sweet Grass County, when he heard someone screaming for help,” Corbley wrote.

   “Four people in a raft and paddle board, had struck a bridge pier and fallen in. Three of them managed to get to shore, but a fourth clung helplessly to a cooler, silently and swiftly moving downriver.”

   “Thomas didn’t think twice, he later admitted. He emptied his pockets, took his lariat and waded out up to his chest. What he had planned was straight out of a western movie.”

   Earlier that year, the “ranch kid” Thomas, had become fixated with roping, or catching cow calves with a lasso.

   “I actually started really getting into roping this year. I went to brandings and started roping cattle then, and I started getting better,” Thomas told KTVQ News 2.   “Every afternoon when it cools off, I go out and rope the roping dummy.”

   “Convincing the man to let go of the cooler, Thomas got him around the arm and neck on his first try, while a bystander on scene rushed to help the young man reel him in.”

   “Thomas’ father, a veteran volunteer firefighter, said that he had called 911 as soon as he heard the screaming, and police records show that from the time of the call, it took just three minutes for a sheriff’s deputy to arrive. By then there was hardly anything to see.”

   “My opinion, Jory saved the individual’s life, 100 percent,” Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg told Cowboy State Daily. “Had Jory not acted, I believe the chances of this individual making it to shore were very slim.”

   “That’s because, as Thomas’ father put it, the swift current on that section of the Yellowstone quickly leads to rapids, logjams, and other obstacles that can easily claim the life of anyone floating through it.”

   “I felt pretty good afterwards that I knew he was okay and was out of the water,” Thomas later said. His grandmother, Sandy Thomas, was there as well.

   “He comes up, and he said, ‘I think I just saved a life,’” Sandy told KTVQ. “And we all said, ‘Yeah, you did.’”

   In our second story (attributed to GNN staff), help came from “neighbors” from far and wide to help farmers after a devastating fire.

   “A few months ago the largest wildfire in Nebraska history burned a thousand square-miles of ranch land. It burned every foot of grass on Mike and Kayla Wintz’s 11,000-acre ranch.” 

   “Within two hours, it’s all gone,” Mike Wintz said. “It’s tough.”

   “But when they and their neighbors faced the threat of losing their livelihoods, something remarkable happened.”

   “The phone started ringing. Thousands of anonymous donors stepped up from across the U.S.”

   “People saying ‘hay is on the way, where did I want it,” Mike Wintz recalls.

   The Wintz ranch alone was gifted $80,000 worth of hay—from mostly anonymous donors.

   “No one asked for this help,” reported Steve Hartman on CBS Evening News. “It just came…”

   “It came from thousands of farmers and ranchers and truck drivers, from as far away as South Carolina.”

   “So many calls in fact, about 200 calls a day , that a volunteer, Sarah Cover, began taking the calls and connecting donors with local farmers affected by the fire.

   “Every farmer that we called to ask to send them hay, they asked us to send it to their neighbor first,” Cover told CBS. News.

   In the final story, by Andy Cornley,  help came from very close by, for a sibling in need, after a frightening medical diagnosis.

   “From Salt Lake City comes the touching story of a 5-year-old girl saved thanks to a bone marrow transplant from her 2-year-old sister,” Corbley wrote.

   “Emma Meline was diagnosed with an extremely rare bone disease after her mother Amanda brought her to the pediatrician with a rash and swelling on her leg.”

   “Lucy, Emma’s younger sister, said she was going to be ‘brave’ for her older sibling, during a mercifully short stay in the hospital for a bone marrow transplant that almost certainly saved Emma’s life.”

   “Months on from the procedure, Emma dotes on Lucy as never before, a source of immense pride and bittersweetness for their mother Amanda.”

   “She’s realizing that Lucy saved her life and they have that bond,” Amanda told People Magazine.  “That’s so incredible.”

   “Meline and her then-husband Jacob noticed the symptoms on Emma’s leg. The pediatrician didn’t like the look of it and ordered lab tests. The good news, he said, was that it wasn’t leukemia.”

   “The bad news was that Emma had aplastic anemia, a rare disease whereby the bone marrow tissue ceases to make blood cells. The disease can range from mild to fatal, can develop at any age, and result from outside aggravations or manifest as an autoimmune disorder.”

   “Sometimes it can be treated with medication, but in Emma’s case, she needed a bone marrow transplant. One of her twin younger sisters Lucy was determined to be a perfect genetic match whose bone marrow could be transplanted without worrying about rejection.”

   “It took 2 months for the operation to be scheduled, during which time mother and daughter practically lived together at the hospital, as the girl was scared to be left alone. Lucy had to have rounds of blood work as well.”

   “[Lucy’s] favorite thing to say was, ‘I’m being brave for Emma,’ if she had to get blood work done,” Meline said. “And it was so tender.”

   Shortly before the Feb. 17th procedure, Emma had to undergo targeted chemotherapy to destroy her bone marrow tissue and make room for the transplant, which was a complete success, allowing mother and daughter to return home on March 11, to begin gradual recovery.”

   “The child requires special sanitary precautions, as she is immunocompromised, but with no recurrence of the aplastic anemia 100 days after the operation, it has been considered a complete success.”

   “’Honestly, it’s really crazy to see Emma’s mental fortitude,’ said Meline, saying the ordeal has forced her daughter to grow up fast.”