A teenage cowboy grabbed his rodeo lariat and roped a drowning stranger out of the Yellowstone River – on his very first throw.
Jory Thomas, 14, was camping with his family near Greycliff, Montana, on July 5 when cries for help rang out across the water. A raft and paddleboard had struck a bridge pillar, throwing four people into the Yellowstone River. It was then that Jory spotted one of them had failed to reach the riverbank and was drifting, clinging for dear life to a cooler.
“We all heard, ‘Help, help,'” Jory said. “There’s two or three people floating down the river, one hanging on to the cooler, and he wasn’t saying anything.”
Jory emptied his pockets, waded through a waist-deep side channel and sprinted along the bank to catch up with the man.
He’d brought his 12-foot lariat that day – something his grandmother, Sandy Thomas, said he’d never packed for a camping trip before.
“Jory comes over quite frequently and has never, ever brought his lariat with him before,” she said. “And that day he did.”
Thomas had only picked up roping seriously that year, practicing on a dummy at his family’s ranch most afternoons after helping out at brandings.
He said: “Every afternoon when it cools off, I go out and rope the roping dummy.”
Those skills came in handy when, with the man still being swept downstream, Jory swung his loop once and let it fly.
“First instinct I thought was try and rope him and drag him out before he gets too far down the river,” he said. “Luckily, I caught him first try.”
He hauled the man through chest-deep water toward the bank until first responders arrived.
“I felt pretty good afterwards that I knew he was okay and was out of the water,” Jory added.
“He comes up, and he said, ‘I think I just saved a life,'” Sandy said. “And we all said, ‘Yeah, you did.'”
Jory said the roping skills he’d learned for cattle had never once crossed his mind as something that might save a person’s life.
“I just thought I could help with cattle,” he said. “Not really helping humans and stuff like that. But I’m glad I was here to help.”
