On his very first mission for the Coast Guard, Officer Scott Ruskan is credited with saving the lives of more than 160 people during the catastrophic Texas floods.
Ruskan, a native of Oxford, New Jersey, was flying overhead the rapidly rising Guadalupe River when he noticed a large group from Camp Mystic clamoring for help.
“Bridges were gone, roadways were gone, and the water was coming up too high for boat rescue," he later said in an interview. "Cell service was bad. Radio reception was bad on my comms, so I really didn’t have any communication with the outside for about three hours.”
With no other way forward, Ruskan, 26, was left on the ground to lead people to safety on foot.
“I was like, sweet, sounds great, I’ll be more helpful on the ground than I will be in the air right now, so that’s kind of what we went with,” he told the New York Post. The Post added, "While on the ground, Ruskan tended to terrified and injured campers, many of them shoeless and still wearing pajamas from their mad dash out of their bunks in the middle of the night."
He spearheaded the rescue operation, a dangerous balance of triage and helicopter safety until all the campers he was responsible for were safe. Homeland Security's Kristi Noem called him an "American hero," but Ruskan says he was just a guy doing his job.
“Honestly, I’m mostly just a dude. I’m just doing a job. This is what I signed up for, and I think that any single Coast Guard rescue swimmer or any single Coast Guard pilot, flight mechanic, whoever it may be, would have done the exact same thing in our situation,” he said.