A Fourth of July day trip into Yosemite Valley turned into a day of heroics for some young people from Mariposa. The group rescued a drowning man from the Merced River.

Kelin Fipps, Jacob Wood, Caroline Pederson, Tyler Costello and an out-of-town friend were enjoying the holiday between Swinging Bridge and Sentinel Beach when the commotion started. Fipps said he first saw Wood jump into the river, but did- n’t realize what was going on.

Then another man ran along the bank, pointing and shouting, “There he is.” Apparently, the man had jumped into the river, but sunk to the bottom for unknown reasons.

Fipps said he doesn’t remember how, but he found himself rescuing the man. “I dove down and pulled him out of the river,” he said. He said the man was face down on the river’s bottom, at least eight feet deep.

The man was not breathing. His eyes and mouth were closed, and his lips were blue. Fipps feared he was dead. He tried to swim, pulling the man along, but couldn’t. He treaded water until someone could get a raft to them.

One of the others in the party was a lifeguard. She quickly went to work to revive the man. She was able to get him breathing again. They floated down to Sentinel Beach where emergency crews were waiting. The man was reportedly taken by air ambulance to Doctors’ Hospital in Modesto.

It wasn’t just Fipps’ heroics that saved the man. Pedersen made the 911 call. What she and Fipps didn’t know was that the dispatcher was Fipps’ younger brother, Jaret. The younger Fipps had no idea that it was his brother who had made the rescue.