LINDSTROM, Minn. – It is that time of year when Minnesota fishermen get the itch to get out on area lakes.
Camden Bever, 15, and his brother are no different.
"I just got the okay from my dad to go out. I was kind of nagging at him and he let me go too," Camden says.
Monday was his first day out on Chisago Lake this winter. Camden and his brother were fishing when he says he heard a man yelling for help. At first, they saw the fisherman several yards away and didn’t immediately know if he was just setting up or actually in distress.
“My brother said hey, he fell through. I looked over. I noticed only his head was up and I was like, 'Oh gosh.' We couldn’t sit back and watch it happen.”
Camden ran over to help the man he says was clinging to a bucket in about 11 feet of water for roughly six minutes. The fisherman, who did not want to go on camera but identified as Chad, shared his story over the phone with KARE 11’s Dylan Wohlenhaus.
“I had ice picks with me,” Chad says. But those picks kept breaking the ice instead of giving him any grip to get out. Camden had several feet of rope with him which he threw to the man in the water while lying on his stomach on the ice.
“He started running out of his own energy because he was holding onto a bucket when I came to him,” Camden says. "He kept struggling to get his foot up. I kept trying to talk to him and he had no response because he didn't really know what was going on at first.”
He was able to pull the man to safety and help get him to his warm truck.
Camden’s mom, Melissa, says it was a proud moment to know her son stepped in to help someone desperately in need.
“He came home and said, I just saved someone’s life,” Melissa says. “I said, 'You did what?' He explained the story and I just feel that this is so amazing that it turned out this way. That man can spend Christmas with his family. Proud mom moment for sure.”
Chad tells Wohlenhaus that he is extremely thankful that the teens were there and in a text message that he "will be forever grateful for his bravery.”
As for Camden, he jokes, had he stayed home to finish his chores the outcome may have been different. “Yep, I had to do some chores. But I somehow got out of that. If it was not for that I don't know what the chances would be for him."