10-year-old Jacob O’Connor knew exactly what to do when he found his brother face down in the pool at his grandmother’s Michigan home. He got his brother out of the pool and started to do CPR, something he’d learned after watching the film San Andreas starring The Rock. While the movie is full of a lot of fantastical elements involving a fictional Earthquake striking California, the movie now has a slight connection to saving lives in reality.
The scene that helped deals with Johnson having to save his daughter — played by Alexandra Daddario — from drowning near the end of the film. While the scene might be fantastical itself, the actions of Dwayne Johnson on the screen gave Jacob exactly what he needed to save his brother according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
“The movie just popped up in my head and I started thinking about that scene,” Jacob, of Roseville, Mich., told The Washington Post. “And that’s when I started doing the compressions.”
For half a minute, Jacob said he pushed and pushed until Dylan’s “heart started pumping.” And then, just like The Rock’s daughter, Jacob’s brother “vomited a little water.”
It’s been about a month since the incident and Jacob’s brother, Dylan, has recovered and the story of young heroism is spreading around. The 10-year-old has earned praise from rescue workers and members of the community, but the biggest admirer might be The Rock himself. Johnson has commented on the story numerous times at this point, even sharing it over on Instagram:
As he put it, the story “grabbed his heart” and prompted quite the response from the action icon:
“I’m so amazed and impressed by this little 10 yr old boy’s heroic actions and calm instincts in the middle of that kind of emergency distress,”
It has affected the star so much, his latest video promises to fly Jacob and his family to Vancouver to the set of Skyscraper because he wants to “shake the hand of a real life hero.” Should be quite the experience.
(Via USA Today / ABC News / Richmond Times-Dispatch)
