Nov 20, 2008 10:00 pm US/Eastern
N.J. Teen Honored For His Heroic Actions
MILLVILLE, N.J. (CBS 3) ―
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Antonio Cruz was honored for saving his cousin from drowning.
CBS
A quick-thinking and determined New Jersey teen was honored Thursday for saving his cousin's life.
Antonio Cruz will never forget the spot on the beach at Millville's Union Lake. It is where he rescued his 22-year-old cousin Rosa Perez, who was drowning in nine feet of water.
"I went in, that's when I saw her there, she wouldn't move, she was like totally dead," said Cruz wearing a suit jacket and tie with khakis and Spalding sneakers as flurries fell Thursday.
It was a far cry from the warmth of May when Cruz and his family were celebrating Memorial Day on the beach when Rosa went under.
"She's like my mom to me," Cruz said choking up.
Then, just 12 years old, Antonio thought of his mother who died two years earlier, as he repeatedly tried to save Rosa.
He went in not once, but three times.
"She was fighting me, she grabbed me, she started to go on top of me to breathe better, you know she was desperate," Cruz said.
"She was flailing, almost took him down again, he regrouped, he went back the third time, and I think probably the third time, she was probably unconscious and he was able to pull her out," Antonio's school principal Tom Denning said.
Antonio had never done CPR before, but he remembered what it looked like because he watched paramedics at his school during a health fair demonstration the month previous.
"We laid her down and I did CPR, I pushed her chest and pressed her nose and blew air through her mouth," explained Cruz. "She was turning purple."
Antonio got her to choke up water and paramedics then took over.
"God gave him a gift that he was able to go in there and perform this all," said Denning.
On Thursday, Antonio accepted the New Jersey Department of Health Outstanding EMS Action by a Youth Award.
"I don't care if they say I'm a hero, if that's their thing, OK, I'm a hero," Antonio said.
Antonio aspires to become an EMS professional himself one day.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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