WILTON – A Wilton man who police Chief Wayne Gallant said saved another man from drowning last summer will receive an Act of Bravery award Friday night at the Maine Chiefs of Police Association’s Winter Conference Banquet.
Adam Jordan, 25, said Monday that he was surprised when he found out about the award. “It’s totally unexpected and unnecessary,” he said. “I (don’t) feel like I deserve an award for it. But it’s nice to be honored,” he added.
Gallant, who nominated Jordan for the award this winter, said Monday that he was notified “about two weeks ago” that the association Awards Committee had voted to honor Jordan. Very few people get the Act of Bravery Award, the chief said. The award recognizes “law enforcement officer(s), public safety personnel or citizen(s) for a highly unusual accomplishment under adverse conditions with some degree of hazard to life and limb to the nominee,” Gallant wrote in a letter, quoting association bylaws.
Jordan said it was a fluke that he was out on Wilson lake on Aug. 26, the day of the accident. He was scheduled for work that afternoon, but his boss let him out early, Jordan said, and so he went home and “jumped on a Jet Ski and went for a spin.”
He saw a disturbance in the water on his way back to the camp he shares with his wife, Michelle, and two young sons, but said he initially thought it was just “somebody fooling around.” But as he got closer to what he would later learn was Wilton resident Thomas Chapman’s boat, he realized from its extreme upward angle and the tight circles it was making that “somebody was in trouble.”
Gallant said Chapman had been accidentally thrown from his boat while it was at full throttle and had been hit three times as the craft circled him. By the time Jordan got close enough to see Chapman, he was exhausted and “only had about two strokes left in him,” Gallant said.
Jordan had to time the rescue perfectly so as not to get hit by the circling boat, said Gallant. “Based on all accounts the gentleman who got knocked off his boat may have, if not died, certainly experienced serious injury,” Gallant said, and added that he was amazed Jordan managed to time his rescue perfectly. “He headed right out, and I truly believe he saved the man’s life,” he said.
For his part, Jordan said, most of his rescue of Chapman is “all a blur.”
“I yelled to him and he couldn’t complete the word help at all,” he said. “So I just. I really don’t know, it’s all kind of still a blur, to tell you the truth. It was strange because I was just lucky to be there at the right time,” he said.
After getting Chapman to shore with the help of Wilton resident Dennis Taylor and his daughter, whom Gallant also nominated for the award, Jordan and some other Wilson lake residents tried to stop the boat as it “made its way across the lake” with a full tank of gas. It was unsafe to approach it, Jordan said, so he and others just waited until it ran out of gas.
“It was very, very funny actually,” Jordan said.
The whole experience “was exhilarating,” Jordan said. “The best possible thing came out of everything, and every possible danger was taken care of,” he said. Chapman was not even hospitalized, he said, and Jordan himself drove Chapman home after the rescue.
Jordan said he and his wife will attend the association banquet in Portland on Friday to receive the award.
“She’s more excited about it than I am, to tell you the truth. She’s very proud of me,” he said.
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