A heroic Coast Guard rescue swimmer is being credited with rescuing 165 victims, many of them children, amidst the devastating and deadly floods in Texas.
Amid the tales of child deaths, home destruction, and other tragedies comes this very hopeful and inspiring story. Scott Ruskan, a 26-year-old from New Jersey who was a KPMG accountant before becoming a rescue swimmer, attracted national attention on his very first mission by the significant number of flood victims whom he was instrumental in saving. He told Good Morning America, “Any of the rescue swimmers in the Coast Guard would’ve done the exact same thing as me or better.”
During the first rescue mission of his career, Rescue Swimmer Scott Ruskan directly saved 165 individuals.
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 7, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security applauds the 65 Aircrew members for their heroism and bravery, including Lt. Ian Hopper, Lt. Blair Ogujiofor, and Flight Mechanic Seth… pic.twitter.com/CZ7BY3xo9x
“This is what it’s all about, right? Like, this is why we do the job,” Petty Officer Ruskan told the New York Post. “This is why we take those risks all the time. This is why, like, Coast Guard men and women are risking their lives every day.”
Ruskan was put in charge of triage for Camp Mystic, where 27 of the young girls and staff at the camp tragically lost their lives. But 165 of the survivors reportedly owe their lives to Ruskan and his team.
Raised in Oxford, NJ, Ruskan enlisted in the Coast Guard in 2021, and after completing basic training, went to Aviation survival technician school in Petaluma, Calif., before being stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas.
He had been on call since November…Bryan Winchell, a helicopter search and rescue technician with Texas Task Force 1 — a partnership between the Texas Army National Guard and the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service — called the Coast Guard looking to get boots on the ground and in the air for an emergency rapid response near central Texas.
Ruskan said, “That’s a little bit outside our area of operation normally, but people were in danger, and we’re a good asset to try and help people out, and these guys were asking for help, so that’s kind of what we do.”
He praised the Coast Guard chopper crew as “literally the best aircrew we could possibly have.” With impassable roads and currents too strong for boats to come in and rescue the 200 or so survivors, helicopters were the only option, and they were racing against sundown.
Ruskan was chosen to stay on the ground with the flood victims as the helicopters were limited by the amount of weight each could carry on a single trip. “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 stated.
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.
In between comforting the “cold, wet and miserable” survivors, both kids and adults, Ruskan directed Army Blackhawk 60s and MH-65s to pockets of survivors to begin bringing them to safety.
Ruskan described comforting the kids and counselors. “I mean this is like probably the worst day of their life. They’re in a terrible situation, they have friends and family unaccounted for, missing, unknown status, and they’re looking to me and all the rescuers for guidance and comfort,” he said.
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The most difficult part of his mission was dealing with the weeping adults who asked him for help finding their family members. “So we basically got the majority of the people out of Camp Mystic, which is awesome. And I feel like we did a lot of good that day, but obviously it’s still super sad,” Ruskan said. “There’s still a lot of people missing and unaccounted for, so the mission’s not over yet. It’s not over for us.”
Pray for all those still missing and stranded in the flood and for the brave first responders who are rescuing them.
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