'I took one huge gasp and ran in'

Lifesaver Emily Greenwood tells new how she rescued two people swept out to sea

- LUCY ROBINSON

When Emily Greenwood, 52, was walking along her local beach in Cornwall with her son in January 2023 and heard screams coming from the sea, she knew she had to act immediately - something which resulted in her winning the Outstanding Bravery award at this year's Pride of Britain event

After weeks and weeks of grey January skies, finally we were met by some sunny weather. I wanted to make the most of the rare bright winter’s day, so I headed to my local beach, Holywell Bay, with my son just as we’d done many times before. Little did we know that this time, things would be a lot different.

When we arrived, everything was normal. We walked along the beach, grabbed a snack, and decided to begin making our way home after spending the morning soaking up the sunshine. But as we made our way across the sand, cries of, “Help me, help me,” came from the sea. Looking up, I saw a boy in the water. He was wearing a wetsuit and had a bodyboard. He’d been in the shallows but was overwhelmed by a rip current and had been dragged out to sea. On the water’s edge, his mum was overcome with shock while the man she was with stripped off and dived in, but he, too, was swept away.

I knew I needed to do something. I pushed my son in his wheelchair to safety, ran to the boy’s mum and explained that we needed to get them both to swim across the rip. We stood by the edge, waving our hands in the air, shouting, “Go this way,” for five minutes until I realised that they were never going to respond. They couldn’t hear us.