It was a fairly regular day for Mason Dunn and Steve Johnson, who were flying in the KFOR-TV news chopper 4. Dunn was flying while Johnson was analyzing the landscape with the onboard camera.
They had their eyes out for any breaking news when they got at a call.
A man was missing somewhere in the North Canadian River.
The helicopter broke off from covering an FBI raid to aid in the search.
Dunn and Johnson found themselves way further out than anyone else in the search party and eventually found
David Stokes, the man they’d been looking for!
Stokes was found clinging to a branch, and had already been in the river for 20 hours.
After being rescued, Stokes told the news crew:
“That branch I grabbed a hold of, it broke. That was it. That was it. Without your helicopter, knowing that you guys were landing … that was everything I had left in me, to get to the bank.”
If the crew had been any later, Stokes might not have made it.
Steve Johnson put it quite candidly:
“If we hadn’t landed, and if that branch had given away, he was pretty much done,”
Stokes is an amputee and, as a result, has significant trouble swimming and staying afloat. The whole issue began when Stokes was on a raft which began to drift from his friends who were in kayaks. The raft failed, and Stokes fell into the water.
Lucky for Stokes, this chopper camera crew were people of integrity. As a camera operator, Johnson comes into contact with pretty heavy situations all the time, and knows to keep filming through it because that’s just the job. But in this case, Johnson acted as a human first and a camera operator second.
“The last thing on my mind was getting a good shot. My first concern was checking on him to see if he was OK. The camera work comes secondary.” -Steve Johnson
That’s Mason Dunn, the helicopter pilot on the left in the picture below, with Steve Johnson on the right.
Dunn initially landed the helicopter in an open, risk free area before deciding they didn’t have proper access to the river.
He then had to make a risky landing on a sandbar for optimal access to Stokes.
“Then, of course, “Superman” Steve got out and went and yanked him out of the water.”
Dunn had previously been praised for his heroics and helicopter flying skills when he saved a stranded calf from the middle of a frozen pond back in 2010!
Stokes really couldn’t have asked for a better team of saviours in this case, and the two worked flawlessly together given the small window of time the helicopter had to fly, given the weight of the camera crew and the high heat of the day.
Never before has KFOR’s helicopter slogan (as seen below) been quite so perfect as it was that day.
We’re all hoping Stokes has a speedy recovery from his ordeal and takes pride in his ability to survive and endure! Seriously, what a testament to his resilience!
You have our applause, KFOR crew! Those are some keepers if I ever saw some!
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