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Vacationing Nurse Jumps Into Action To Save Teens In Distress On Lake Michigan

DETROIT (WWJ) - A local nurse is being hailed a hero after saving twin boys on Lake Michigan.

Beaumont Hospital Nurse Matt Whitcomb was trying to teach his dog to sit in a kayak on Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula when a man ran up to him asking to borrow his kayak.

"He said, 'this may sound crazy but I think my kids are out there drowning right now,'" Whitcomb told WWJ's Zahra Huber.

Whitcomb says he jumped into action -- and went looking for the two 16-year-old boys -- whose inner tube was pushed away from shore by the wind.

Whitcomb says he found the boys and told them to grab on to the ends of his kayak --

"They were really emotional, they started to cry, like, 'oh my God, I thought we were going to die,' they were just treading water there.

"They had little inner-tubes," says Whitcomb, "and I guess the wind was pushing them further out with the inner-tubes and they ditched them, thinking they could swim back -- but them the current got ahold of them and they said they were swimming and they were just going backwards."

Other than being exhausted the two are okay.

In turn, they gave Whitcomb a buck knife that their grandfather had given to them when they were just nine years old.

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