MERCED COUNTY, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 A Southern California father is being called a hero after jumping into the Merced River in Yosemite National Park to rescue a man who was drowning.<\/p>\n
The father, who was visiting the park with his sons, told FOX26 he was simply in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n
“We took my boys on a little hike, and then we decided to cool off in the river,” he said.<\/p>\n
While spending time near the water, he heard someone calling for help.<\/p>\n
“As we were doing that, I heard somebody in the distance yelling, screaming, ‘Please, please, please!'” he recalled.<\/p>\n
He said he quickly realized someone was struggling in the river.<\/p>\n
“And that’s when I realized it’s somebody drowning and somebody’s under the water,” he said. “I don’t even remember making the decision to jump in. It was like the next thing I knew, I was swimming.”<\/p>\n
The father swam toward the man, identified as Ze Seng, a Chinese visitor who was traveling in the United States and visiting Yosemite.<\/p>\n
After pulling Seng from the water, he performed CPR while waiting for help to arrive.<\/p>\n
At one point, he feared Seng might not survive.<\/p>\n
“At this point, I was actually worried. I didn’t know if he was even alive anymore, to be honest,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said seeing his children watching the rescue gave him the strength to keep going.<\/p>\n
“I think it was the idea that my kids were watching it that gave me sort of that strength to keep kicking and keep going,” he said. “So eventually, I made it back to shore.”<\/p>\n
Seng says he feels incredibly fortunate to have survived.<\/p>\n
“I’m so lucky,” he said.<\/p>\n
The father says he does not consider himself a hero, but hopes his actions remind others to pay attention and help when someone is in danger.<\/p>\n
For Seng, the quick actions of a stranger turned a terrifying moment into a second chance at life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MERCED COUNTY, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 A Southern California father is being called a hero after jumping into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-401825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}