Cody Mahrt, 14, is a real hero

QUICK LEARNER:
One week after learning how to drive the family’s red jet boat, 14-year-old Cody Mahrt found himself at the helm making a daring solo swift-water rescue of another youth likely suffering from hypothermia and struggling in the Sacramento River’s rapids near Arden Way off Balls Ferry Road in Anderson.

Anderson Union High School sophomore Cody Mahrt, 14, wasn't thinking especially heroic thoughts Tuesday, June 23, 2009, when he arrived home shortly after 11 a.m. from a visit with his grandfather.

Home alone, Cody walked through the front door of the Arden Way house where he, his parents and two siblings had moved just two years ago. As he entered, Cody just happened to glance through a large window at the back of the house with its unobstructed view of the rapidly flowing Sacramento River gently lapping at the family's back yard.

That was when Cody noticed something he had never seen before. Several people were attempting to swim across the river and one of them looked like he was struggling in the cold, swift water.

"I went out into the back yard where we keep our jet boat moored to a tree. I could see that he was being swept down to the rapids below our house," Cody recalled later that day, after telling his story several times to TV and newspaper reporters and once to a Shasta County Sheriff's Deputy.

When the young man struggling in the water started yelling for help, Cody called 9-1-1.

"I could see the other two kids wading ashore on the brushy little island that is on the other side of the river so I wasn't too worried about them," said Cody, who thought he recognized those two as students from school even though he couldn't recall their names.

But the youth in the water was having a more difficult time just keeping his head out of the water.

"My dad had just given me a couple of lessons on how to drive the jet boat so I was comfortable untying it and getting it started," Cody related with a teenager's nonchalant bravado.

"It took me about a minute to maneuver the jet boat down to where he was in the rapids," Cody said, noting that, at least in that particular spot, the rapids are "not too violent."

There were no rocks showing and Cody knew from other trips on the river with his father, Dave Mahrt, that the water was probably 7 feet to 8 feet deep in that section of the river.

"I pulled up next to him and left the engine on idle so that he and the boat were floating downstream at about the same speed," Cody explained of his rescue strategy.

And then, despite the other youth's larger bulk and numb limbs, Cody — at 5-foot, 8-inches and weighing just over 100 pounds — quickly reached over the side and pulled the other youth out of the water and into the boat, most likely aided by an adrenaline rush that sometimes provides what seems at the time to be superhuman strength.

"It's the first time I've ever done something like that, but it feels great! I can't describe how great it feels," Cody said of the elation he felt afterward, knowing that he had most likely saved someone from drowning who was suffering from hypothermia.

"As I pulled him out of the water, he told me that he could no longer feel his arms or his legs," Cody said. "On the ride back to our house, all he could say over and over was ‘Thank you' several times."

On the way back, Cody also stopped to pick up the other two swimmers who were waiting on the opposite shore.

Once safely back home, Cody offered the three teens some towels while they waited for Sheriff's Deputy Jon Ruiz to arrive.

After determining that the teens were not injured and no medical aid was necessary, Ruiz took a few notes and then left, as did the three swimmers.

When contacted several days later for a followup interview, Cody's justifiably proud parents, Peggy and Dave Mahrt, are still shaking their heads about what might have been.

"We're not quite sure how Cody managed to do all of it, but we are glad that he was there at just the right time," Mrs. Mahrt said.

"Yes, we are very proud of Cody and so grateful that the other young man is okay," she added.

A Sheriff's Department spokesman said Saturday, June 27, that the youths' names could not be released because they are juveniles.