MILLBURY, Mass. — After a woman was swept away in a dangerous rip current in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a Massachusetts native said he jumped into action to pull her back to safety.
Mark Dyberg, a 26-year resident of Millbury, now lives with his wife in Florida. This week, they were on vacation at LaConcha Hotel in San Juan.
Dyberg formerly served part-time with Millbury’s police. He still has family in Massachusetts.
Wednesday night, he was reading on the patio of the hotel near the shore — until a man came running and yelling at him from the jetty.
“There’s three people in the water,” Dyberg remembered the man saying. “They need help!”
Dyberg told Boston 25 he rushed to the hotel’s front desk and told them to call 911. After, he ran to the pool, grabbed a floating ring, and kept running to the jetty.
Dyberg said a group of bystanders on the jetty had removed one of the three in the water. However, a college-aged woman named “Emily” and a 23-year-old man who jumped in to save her were still out in the water.
“You could hear very faint cries from Emily way out in the ocean calling for help,” Dyberg remembered. “You can’t see anything. All you had was really bad ocean waves.”
He added, “I have a daughter, and I’m thinking, ‘I would want somebody to do this for my daughter.’ So, I stripped down to my underwear, grabbed both of the rings, and went off the rocks.”
He said the waves crashed against him, knocking him into the jetty rocks and causing minor injuries.
Dyberg said he fought his way 150 yards off the coast to Emily.
He explained, “When I finally did see her, the waves were coming up and over her. So, she probably didn’t have much more fight left in her.”
Dyberg hoisted them both onto floating rings. Meanwhile, he said emergency services launched a remote-controlled device that dragged them away from the rocks and towards the shore.
There, they were both met by ambulances.
“She called for me,” Dyberg said. “I went over, and she just grasped a hold and would not let me go, and said, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’”
Emily reportedly stayed in Puerto Rico searching for her friend, who wasn’t found after jumping into the water Wednesday night.
On Facebook, the US Coast Guard Sector San Juan said they were searching for 23-year-old Samuel Cruz.
Friday, they posted that they found his body 1.5 nautical miles from the shore.
Dyberg said he’s been in touch with Emily, whose family flew to Puerto Rico to be with her Thursday night.
He told Boston 25 that her family wants to meet him and personally thank him for saving her life.
His wife and daughter learned about his quick action after he jumped into the water.
“They were both pretty proud,” he said. “But, they were pretty upset with me... My wife was like, ‘I need my husband.’ My daughter was like, ‘I need my dad.’”
Dyberg said he’ll be flying back to Florida from San Juan on Saturday.
He showed Boston 25 several signs at the beach warning of dangerous rip currents.
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