It was a hug that was long overdue.
Monday night, at Auburndale City Hall, a tearful Tamara Huber-Lucas wrapped her arms around Dwayne Hingos, the man who saved her life.
“You’re a hero,” she told him. “I don’t even know how to thank you.”
Back on the afternoon of Oct. 18, Hingos, a dispatcher at Medline in Auburndale, was taking a break outside his company’s large warehouse when he heard a huge splash.
“It just happened so quick,” Hingos remembered.
As it turns out, a driver having a medical episode had lost consciousness, darted down a hill, and plowed directly into a retention pond outside Medline.
WFTS He didn’t hesitate. A coworker helped unlock a gate, allowing Hingos to get to the pond quickly.
“I just started running,” he said.
He ran at least the length of a football field, jumped into the water, and found out the alligator-infested pond was also very deep.
“After you get about five feet in, it really drops. It was a lot deeper than I thought,” Hingos said.
He swam up to the car and ultimately pulled the driver out of her car’s open sunroof just seconds before the vehicle became completely submerged.