A heroic rescue! (Video)

More than 25 years have passed since, but it remains an important example of great human bravery and compassion. In 1990, during a visit to the Detroit Zoo, with his wife and three children,  truck driver Rick Swope did something no one else would do when tragedy befell. As Swope stood looking in on the facility’s ape enclosure, a fight broke out between a chimp named Jo-Jo and another male. After the brief scuffle, Jo-Jo tried to escape – only to end up falling into a deep moat designed to keep him in. Chimpanzees, unlike humans, cannot swim and are usually afraid of water, the move nearly proved fatal.

Rick didn’t even think twice and acted quickly. Ignoring the warnings of the zookeepers, he climbed up over the 4-foot fence and dived into the water saving the chimp’s life while putting his own at risk. Chimps were potentially vicious in dealing with intruders, yielding about five times the strength of the average man. Completely unaware of that fact, Rick Swope jumped right in. He saw the chimp struggling and eventually sinking to the bottom of the moat. At 5 feet 10 inches, Swope could barely stand in the 6-foot-deep moat. Groping around the murky water for the primate, he finally caught hold of him, dragging him to the nearest shore. “Everyone in the whole place was just standing around watching this monkey drown. When he went down the second time I knew I had to do something. I happened to look into his eyes, and it was like looking into the eyes of a man, and the message was, ‘Won’t anybody help me?'” Rick said.

He put his own life at risk!

Swope only backed off when he saw that the more aggressive chimps were barreling towards them. Though it attracted widespread media attention at the time, Swope’s courageous rescue of the chimp has been all but forgotten over the years. Not forgotten by everybody though. Dr. Jane Goodall of the Jane Goodall Institute, a nonprofit committed to protecting and conserving the lives of chimpanzees in Africa, still remembered the extraordinary event when she spoke at the Wilson Center. Thankfully, there was someone in the crowd who was happy to oblige. It’s amazing how some people transcend the boundaries between man and animal, showing that compassion is a universal language no matter what species you are. Watch the video, you can witness this heroic rescue, as if you were there!

“He was pretty lifeless, but you could see he was still alive,” Swope recalled. “He was looking at me. I think he knew what was going on.”

Source: www.holidogtimes.com