PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 The family of a man who was struck by lightning over the weekend while riding a personal watercraft off the coast of Fort De Soto honors his memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe and his wife are some of the best people I absolutely know on this earth,\u201d said family friend Fano Barton. \u201cSteve and his wife, they didn\u2019t have much, but what they had they gave to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
41-year-old Steve Matheson was in town from Utah for a work trip. On Saturday he went out in the water with a friend on a Sea-Doo where he was struck by lightning.<\/p>\n
\u201cSteve always tried to do things to put his family first, loved his kids, shows up to everything and if work interfered, work had to go,\u201d said another family member James Shuman. \u201cThat\u2019s how important his family was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marrianne says her cousin checked weather radar before heading out that morning. She says just before he was struck, he and his friend had stopped to help a distressed boater they found on their way back to shore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey knew the storm was there and coming and so even in his last moments, he was helping people, serving,\u201d Marianne said.<\/p>\n
Max Defender 8 Meteorologists say thunderstorms can sometimes give people a false impression that they\u2019re safe from the bolts when a storm isn\u2019t directly overhead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get lightning strikes well ahead of the rain and well behind the rain,\u201d said Rebecca Barry. \u201cThey\u2019re called \u2018bolts from the blue\u2019 because oftentimes the top of the storm is not in the same location that the bottom of the storm is so you\u2019ll get lightning strikes well before you get raindrops.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hearing thunder typically means you are in danger of being struck.<\/p>\n
Matheson\u2019s family says with his sudden death, his wife is dealing with unexpected expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlying Steve back to Utah, the costs with that, the funeral, and then her trying to figure out the next 10 to 20 years, what to do for her kids, being a single mom now,\u201d said Barton.<\/p>\n
The family is raising money online for their expenses. So far they\u2019ve been able to raise around $50,000 dollars from the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 The family of a man who was struck by lightning over the weekend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-388947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}