Cooper Davis considers himself a pretty good swimmer, and those skills came in handy recently. The 8-year-old Johns Creek boy is being hailed a hero after he helped rescue another boy from drowning in a California hotel pool.
"I've been on the swim team last year and this year and [had] lessons basically my whole life," he told Channel 2 Action News.
Cooper's training kicked in while he and his family were vacationing in Garden Grove, Calif., a few miles from Disneyland. He told Channel 2 he noticed another boy face down at the bottom of the pool.
"I thought he was playing, so I took a breath and I heard another kid say: 'Help! Help! A kid's drowning,'" Cooper said. "I dove down [and] latched him with one hand. When I got to the surface, I flipped him over because I knew he couldn't breathe."
Sitting poolside, Cooper's father Jeff heard the cries for help.
"I reached down and grabbed him and pulled him up out of the water," Jeff Davis said. "We proceeded to try and do CPR."
Davis said the rescued boy barely had a pulse and was unconscious. Paramedics were able to revive him.
"I heard them ask the boy's name, and he was able to say it and was whimpering, and at that point I knew things were looking up," he told Channel 2.
Garden Grove police gave the Davis family a coin to commemorate their heroics, then passed along the information to the city of Alpharetta. Alpharetta leaders passed the information on to the Johns Creek City Council, in hopes it will honor Cooper for his bravery.
Cooper told Channel 2 he appreciates the attention. "I'm just glad the kid's OK," he said.
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