Two people are alive today thanks to Jim Allsop

Jim Allsop doesn't consider himself a hero, but a family in Cancun, Mexico may very well think otherwise.

Allsop and his wife, Lynda, were vacationing at a resort over the Easter weekend. On Easter Monday, his quick actions saved the life of a father and his young daughter.

“We are beach walkers, we walk for miles along the beach every day,” Allsop said. “We walked for about an hour down the beach after lunch. When we turned around and started back, we noticed a woman trying to get into the water. The waves slammed her to the ground and washed her ashore.

“She was panicking, and we didn't know what was going on. We looked out into the ocean, and that's where we saw a man holding up his daughter out of the water. He was disappearing under the water. The fear and peril in his eyes, we knew right away he was drowning. The current was taking him deeper into the ocean, he wasn't able to touch, and he was running out of energy.”

Allsop, a self-proclaimed aquanarian, sprang into action. He handed his hat and glasses to his wife and ran into the ocean.

“Without another thought, I swam as hard and as fast as I could to get to them,” he said. “When I got to them, I put the girl around my shoulders and wrapped her arms around my neck and grabbed her father with my right arm. I kind of rode the waves in, then planted myself firmly when I was able to touch, but the riptide just wanted to sweep my legs out from under me.”

The entire experience is still just a blur, he said. But, as a father, he knew something was wrong when he saw the man struggling to hold up his daughter.

“I have no idea how long it took me to get to them; I just swam like hell,” he said. “The waves were so hard. I had to swim until a wave was upon me, then I had to dive under the wave, otherwise, it would just push me backwards. The entire time, I was thinking to myself, what the hell am I going to do when I get there? I had no idea, and then something just told me to wrap her around my back and grab him under one arm. I struggled so much to get back, that that night, and for the rest of the vacation, it felt like I had been kicked in the stomach.”

When they got ashore, Allsop said he got a hug from the man's wife and a thank you, but his adrenaline was pumping so hard, he wasn't really concentrating on what was going on around him.

“I didn't even really realize what had just happened until a few hours later, when my wife was telling others the story.”

After he saved the father and daughter, he just put on his hat and glasses and kept walking like nothing had even happened. They didn't even get the names of the people he had just saved. He said he thinks the girls was five or six years old, while the father was in his early 30s.

He said there were thousands of people on the beach that day, and his wife told him many people were there cheering him on as he dragged the two in from the ocean. Even the lifeguard for that area was only just arriving as he already almost to shore.

“The lifeguard at this particular spot was having lunch at the time,” he said. “My wife was looking for him to come and help, and she started yelling to him. By the time he realized what was happening, and had dropped his lunch, ran to his stand to get his equipment and then ran to the ocean, I was already 15 feet from shore.”

And, now that he's had time to reflect on everything that happened, Allsop said he knows he was in the right time at the right place for a reason, especially considering the trip was a spontaneous adventure.

Allsop and his wife were driving to Toronto for a business meeting. The forecast was calling for five to eight inches of snow in Sudbury.

“Somewhere between Parry Sound and Barry, at 4 p.m., my wife found a trip using her iPhone to Cancun, and 14 hours later (on March 24) we were on a plane,” he said. “They say nothing happens for a reason, and I guess we were meant to go to Cancun and help save this family.

“My daughter said it best in a Facebook post, that a family still gets to be a family. That's the most humbling thing of it all. There's still a mother, daughter and father that are still a mother, daughter and father thanks to my actions. I don't expect any credit for it; there was something happening, and I needed to do something.”