Walking Tall

A man with a troubled past saves a life. Two months later, he does it again

- BY Robert Kiener

IT WAS JUST past noon on a sunny Saturday last August when longtime fishing buddies Jacob Bell and Craig McDonald decided to call it a day. Since 6:30 that morning, they'd been fishing from Bell's 18-foot aluminium runabout on Texas's Lake Waxahachie, about a half hour south of Dallas. Trolling for bass and lazily drifting from Bell's vintage boat, they'd landed a half dozen keepers.

"Not a bad day's work," Bell told McDonald as he steered the runabout to the boat ramp where Bell's truck and boat trailer were parked. As he dropped off McDonald, Bell heard screaming coming from the lake, some 150 feet offshore.

He sped in his boat toward the scene, where he saw a girl, had to be around 13, hollering and waving an arm. She was in 12-foot-deep water and seemed to be holding on to a life jacket or a raft. But when Bell got closer, he was shocked to see that the girl was, in fact, gripping the foot of another girl, who was submerged upside down.

My God! thought Bell. She’s drowning! Instinctively, he grabbed the submerged girl’s arms, and then her hands, trying to pull her up and into his boat. Though the six-foot-tall Bell, 48, was lean and muscular, he couldn't lift her. She was like a dead weight. Instead, he pulled her through the water to the rear of the boat, which was more shallow. There, he was able to hoist her up and on to the deck as her panicked friend grabbed on to the side of the boat.

As he looked at the unconscious teenager lying on the deck of his boat, he thought,