{"id":29836,"date":"2012-05-06T10:41:47","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T14:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=29836"},"modified":"2012-05-06T10:41:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T14:41:47","slug":"staff-sgt-ryan-lowe-saving-the-world-one-person-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=29836","title":{"rendered":"Staff Sgt. Ryan Lowe, saving the world one person at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Caprioli at Army.mil<\/a> tells the story of SSG Ryan Lowe of the 563rd Military Police Company, 91st MP Battalion at Fort Drum who happened by one of my favorite fishing sites when I lived in Redwood, NY at Butterfield Lake. Ryan was reconning from some fishing himself when he noticed Richard Stefanko fall from his new boat into the frigid waters. <\/p>\n

Without thinking of his own safety, SSG Lowe jumped in after Stefanko;<\/p>\n

“You’re trained — ever since basic (training) — to respond with half instinct and half of what you’re (supposed) to do,” he explained. “In the military police, a lot of it is just helping people out who are in bad situations.”<\/p>\n

Lowe, who has been deployed twice, said he believes combat training prepared him to take better courses of action when dealing with situations.<\/p>\n

“When I got to the boat, I realized the severity of the situation. He was struggling with the way the vest was keeping him afloat,” he said. “By the time I got to him \u2026 he wasn’t able to talk to me, and that’s when I realized I had to get him back to shore and out of the water.<\/p>\n

“I was trying to talk to him, but he wasn’t able to talk real well,” Lowe noted. “I could see on his face that he was struggling.”<\/p>\n

He grabbed Stefanko’s lifejacket and pulled the disoriented man to shore.<\/p>\n

Once on shore, Lowe used his body to support Stefanko as he began to recover from the cold water.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes, Stefanko began to show signs of recovery.<\/p>\n

“He was starting to stand on his own, and he was beginning to talk to me,” Lowe said of Stefanko. “He just kept saying, ‘you saved my life.'”<\/p>\n

“(Lowe) was very professional,” Stefanko noted. “He stayed right with me. He made sure I was OK.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What real heroes say;<\/p>\n

“It’s real hard to grasp that it meant that much to (Stefanko). I never expected any attention for this,” Lowe said. “I just saw a guy who needed help, so I went out and helped him. I don’t think I did (anything heroic).”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, SSG Lowe didn’t urinate on a Koran, so we’ll never read his story in the New York or LA Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Caprioli at Army.mil tells the story of SSG Ryan Lowe of the 563rd Military Police … Staff Sgt. Ryan Lowe, saving the world one person at a time<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}