Five years after they met at Santa Barbara’s Boys & Girls Club, Jalen Commadore and Avery Artigo found themselves giving CPR to a lifeless 10-year-old boy. On Saturday, at the organization’s annual gala, the pair will be honored for their heroic actions that saved the boy’s life.
Kids who were at Santa Barbara High School’s pool on the afternoon of August 14, 2015, say the boy had jumped minutes before from the diving board into the deep end. Dared by friends who said they would catch him, the kid who didn’t know how to swim sank to the bottom of the pool and lost consciousness.
Artigo, then 15, an on-duty lifeguard the day of the Boys & Girls Club summer bash, swam to the boy while Commadore, then 20 and a CPR-certified aspiring EMT, ran along the deck. In an “adrenaline rush,” the two “tag-teamed” to get him out of the water, said Commadore in a recent phone interview with The Santa Barbara Independent. “All the background noise, everybody around kind of just faded out. It was just me, Avery, and this boy,” said Commadore of the moment.