Back home in Dallas, 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai is still dealing with the aftershock of nearly losing his life on a California beach last month. <\/p>\n
“I was pretty much on the shore, [and] I got like pulled,” Nathaniel told NBC 5. <\/p>\n
Nathaniel, who has now seen the viral video of himself being rescued, said he was on a family vacation when their beach day ended with him almost drowning. <\/p>\n
“I screamed for help,” he said. <\/p>\n
That call was answered by a 16-year-old lifeguard, Ryder Williams, who said he saw Nathaniel lose his footing. Williams radioed for help as he rushed into the water. <\/p>\n
“I think one more wave happened and I went unconscious,” Nathaniel said. “When I woke up, Ryder was taking me to shore … I was super thankful because I knew he was going to save my life.”<\/p>\n
Ryder has been called a hero for saving the boy’s life, but he said he was simply doing the job he loved. Only a few days ago, Nathaniel and his dad got to speak to him to express their gratitude. <\/p>\n
“I was like, ‘Thank you so much for saving my life and my sister thanked him,'” Nathaniel said. <\/p>\n
That thank you led to a video chat with both families, according to Nathaniel’s father, Sumit Rai. He said in a serendipitous way, they now feel connected. <\/p>\n
“It turns out there’s a lot of commonalities between us,” Rai said. “We all really like UFC, so we’re talking about going to a fight together … It also so happens that [Ryder’s father] is a retired firefighter and Ryder wants to follow in his footsteps and be a firefighter. I happen to run a nonprofit for firefighters to screen them for cancer.”<\/p>\n
It was a scary, tragic situation that revealed that some moments can reveal something bigger. Nathaniel and his dad said they are grateful for it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back home in Dallas, 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai is still dealing with the aftershock of nearly losing his life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3267,102,104,103],"class_list":["post-398167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-california","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}