James Alan Garner was in the Duck River with his two children when he saw a young man being carried downstream.
It was May 23, 2025, at the boat ramp in Chickasaw Trace Park in Columbia, Tennessee. Garner was 41, a network engineer. The Duck River runs west through Columbia toward the Tennessee River.
The man in the current was Colin McNary, 25. He was severely autistic, and he had run into the river at the ramp. The current took him downstream.
Samuel Hardin Adcock was with Garner’s family on the south side of the ramp. He was 26 and worked as a tool coordinator at an auto assembly plant. Adcock went first. He waded out to the channel and started swimming freestyle downstream after McNary.
Garner’s children were in the water with him. He told them to get out of the river and go to the car. Then he went in. The children were on their way to the car, and their father was in the river.
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He swam downstream after the other two. About 1,000 feet down, the current pushed McNary into a calmer stretch of river. Adcock caught up and grabbed him.
A thousand feet is more than three football fields. McNary was struggling to stay up, and he pulled Adcock under. Adcock pushed him away to get a breath.
He found an underwater tree limb and stood on it. He grabbed McNary again and pushed him toward the bank. Garner arrived and got behind McNary. Together the two men pushed and pulled him to a large tree root on the bank.
They held on there. The bank above them was a steep, rocky ledge. None of them could climb it. Garner swam about 120 feet upstream looking for another way out. There was none, and he swam back.
He stayed with McNary and kept him calm. The three of them waited in the river for help. A rescue boat came. It took McNary back to the boat ramp, where his parents were waiting.
An ambulance took him to a hospital. Then the boat came back for Adcock and Garner. All three were tired and cold. None of them was hurt.
In 2026, both men were awarded the Carnegie Medal. It is given to civilians in the United States and Canada who enter extreme danger to save or try to save the lives of others. They were two of 18 people named in the commission’s first announcement of that year.
Later, Adcock and Garner went to the hospital to check on McNary. They were still wet from the river.
If you were standing in a river with your own children when a stranger went by in the current, would you have sent them to the car and gone after him?
