An 80-year-old pilot was strapped into his seat upside down, underwater. His floatplane had flipped over and crashed into Lake Sammamish, more than half a mile from land.
It was September 15, 2023, in Bellevue, Washington, east of Seattle. The pilot was Anthony L. Jurcan.
He was 80, and he was still flying. His passenger, his stepson, got out of the plane. A boater pulled him aboard. Jurcan was still in the cabin.
Matt Vasey was working at his house on the lake. He was 54, a technology executive.
A neighbor told him about the crash. He got into his ski boat and headed for the plane.
The boater who had pulled the stepson from the water was still there. He told Vasey the pilot was still inside. Vasey jumped off his boat. The water was cold and deep.
Elon is going all in on THIS
Take a look at this…
It’s Terafab — Elon Musk’s new AI chip factory in Texas.
You see, Elon needs more AI chips than the whole industry can make today…
So he decided to mass produce his own.
But there’s a catch…
Because AI can’t scale without a radical “light-speed” device…
Not even Elon’s.
Yet most Americans have never heard of it.
Former Wall Street insider Jason Bodner — the same man who called Nvidia at $4.50 split-adjusted — says this device is about to launch a whole new wave of AI winners…
And to prove it, he’s giving away his #1 stock involved with it — for free.
We have so much to look forward to
Cold water takes strength out of a swimmer quickly.
He swam 60 feet to the plane. He went under and reached in through the canopy, which was partly open.
He could not move Jurcan. He came up for air. Then he went back down. He forced the canopy open with his hands and his feet. He climbed inside the submerged cabin.
He found the lap belt and unbuckled it. He pulled Jurcan up to the surface. The pilot had been underwater the whole time Vasey was working on the canopy.
Jurcan was not responding. He was also heavier than Vasey.
Vasey got him up onto a wing of the plane. He started CPR there, on the water. Another boat arrived. Its passengers helped pull Jurcan aboard, and the boat raced for shore with both men on it.
Vasey and others kept up CPR until paramedics took over. Anthony Jurcan died at the scene. He died from injuries he suffered in the crash. He did not drown.
Vasey had cuts on his hands and face. He did not seek treatment.
In 2026, he was awarded the Carnegie Medal, given to civilians in the United States and Canada who enter extreme danger to save or try to save the lives of others.
The medal counts the attempt. Vasey’s attempt got a man out of a sunken cabin and into the hands of paramedics.
Whatever the crash had done to him, Anthony Jurcan did not die strapped into that seat under the lake. A 54-year-old man in cold water, half a mile from land, went down twice and got him out.
If you had gone down once and could not move him, would you have come up for one breath and gone back down?