While kayaking, Jake was attacked by wasps —and Pam and Michelle raced to save him!

The Shoff family’s Hawaii river trip turned from peaceful to perilous when one of their kayaks brushed into a wasp nest. But thankfully there are heroes in the unlikeliest of places . . .

Even though the water was as smooth as glass, “Life jackets stay on!” Emily Shoff told her husband, Jake, and their three boys as they kayaked along Hawaii’s Hanalei River.

Suddenly, though, Jake veered too close to shore— and his kayak sideswiped a volleyball-sized wasp nest.

Almost immediately, the air was swarming with angry insects.

I think he’s going into anaphylactic shock!

“Ouch!” the vacationing South Jordan, Utah, family cried as they were stung. And as Jake paddled furiously to get away, his kayak tipped over, plunging him, 10-yearold Brady and Grant, four, into the water!

“Over here!” Emily—who was six months pregnant— directed the boys, who bobbed along safely in their vests until she and Zach, 14, reached them while Jake tried to right his kayak.

Meanwhile, Pam Crooke and Michelle Garcia Winner of San Jose, California, were paddling around the bend. “Need help?” they called. “Be careful. There’s a wasp nest over there!” Emily warned.

The two women steadied the kayak so Jake could climb back inside. But as he tried to thank them, Jake’s voice trailed off as his throat clamped shut!

“Daddy!” the kids cried as Jake fell back into the water, hardly breathing and barely conscious.

“I think he’s going into anaphylactic shock from the wasp stings! Do you have an Epipen?” Michelle blurted.

Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “We didn’t know he was allergic!”

As she dialed 911 on her cellphone, the two other women—unable to hoist 6'8", 300-pound Jake into the kayak—struggled to keep his head above water. Both speech pathologists, they knew the best way to keep Jake’s air passage clear was to hold his mouth open and his head to one side.

Still, as the minutes ticked by, they were growing exhausted.

“Thank God!” Emily cried when she heard a rising siren on the far side of the woods. Only it roared past—then doubled back the other way! Emily’s cellphone rang. “The driver can’t find you,” the dispatcher said.

“Over here!” they all shouted. But the woods between the river and highway were impenetrable, and the dock was a quarter mile away!

Yet even as their limbs burned from treading water for so long, Pam and Michelle remained calm for Jake.

“You cannot die. Your family is watching. Breathe!” Pam whispered while Michelle tapped his face and kicked his legs to keep him awake.

Nearly half an hour had passed before finally a lifeguard arrived on a paddleboard. He quickly helped Pam and Michelle wrestle Jake into a larger life jacket, then loaded him onto a jet ski and zipped to shore, where EMTS immediately administered oxygen and a shot of epinephrine.

By the time they reached the hospital, Jake’s vital signs were returning to normal. “He’s going to be fine,” doctors determined as they also treated the boys’ stings. “He’s just lucky his head was kept up, and he didn’t aspirate more river water or he could have drowned.”

Emily knew who to thank: Pam and Michelle. “They truly are our angels!” Jake agrees. “Thanks to them, I am here with my family—which now includes baby Max!” Jake marvels. “They will always be part of this family, too!”

— Bill Holton

“Heroism is endurance for one moment more.” George F. Kennan