A 12-year-old Brookings boy and his grandmother helped rescue a man who fell into the water Thursday at the Port of Brookings Harbor sport boat basin.

Kenneth Francis and Marcia Francis were walking on the dock about 1 p.m. when they heard a woman scream. Kenneth spotted 62-year-old Rodney Smith of Alaska in the water, with one hand gripping the dock and another flailing in the air.

Kenneth ran to Smith and grasped his jacket to hold the man up. Marcia tried to hold onto Smith’s belt loops, but they broke so she held his belt.

They were able to keep Smith from going under until four men arrived and pulled him to safety.

“He was shivering,” said Kenneth, who ran to his parents’ boat nearby to get a blanket.

“He was extremely blue,” Marcia Francis said of Smith. “If Kenneth hadn’t seen him there, there would have been no help for him. The Lord put us there for a reason.”

Kenneth Francis was not attending school Thursday afternoon because he was distraught over the fate of his best friend, Bryce Bond, who fell more than 80 feet from a rock into Macklyn Cove on Wednesday and was hospitalized in Portland.

The boy used his grandmother’s cell phone to call 911 about Smith. Personnel from the Curry County Sheriff’s Office soon arrived. 

Marcia Francis said Smith was “disoriented.” He fell into the water while stepping from the sailboat he had purchased two days earlier.

“I was actually pretty scared when I saw his hands,” Kenneth Francis said. “I didn’t know if he was dead.”