CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer Scott Ruskan will receive the Pat Tillman Award for Service at Wednesday night’s ESPY Awards
The award comes a year after he helped evacuate campers from the catastrophic Hill Country floods that cut off roads and capsized rescue boats near Camp Mystic.
Ruskan, a petty officer stationed in Corpus Christi, said he still remembers the early-morning call that sent his crew toward the flooding with only limited information.
“There’s a couple of hundred people trapped. And it’s near San Antonio, and we’re gonna go help them out,” Ruskan said. “That was pretty much all we had for briefing.”
When the crew arrived, Ruskan said they faced dangerous weather while flying through valleys and over flood debris.
“You would see trees where you shouldn’t see trees. There were cars where there shouldn’t be cars,” he said.
Ruskan said he was the first rescuer on the ground at Camp Mystic and took a moment to steady himself before beginning evacuations.
“I think I probably took like three seconds just to breathe,” he said.
Over the next four hours, Ruskan and his crew helped evacuate around 180 campers and counselors, he said.
Ruskan said he was credited with assisting 165 people into a U.S. Army aircraft, while other members of the Coast Guard crew assisted in evacuating an additional 15 people.
“Between the four of us, we got 180 people out of there to safety,” Ruskan said. “I couldn’t have gotten in there and done any rescuing if we didn’t get there safely.”
Ruskan said the campers were coping with fear and uncertainty as evacuations continued.
“They’re missing friends. They’re missing loved ones,” he said. “So just kind of being able to talk through them, be like, ‘Hey, I just need you to keep it together for a few more moments.”
Months later, Ruskan said he reunited with the family of one of the girls he rescued, Milly Cate McClymond, when he was honored at the State of the Union.
“They were super thankful,” Ruskan said. “And I was, you know, just trying to hold back tears and let them know I was OK.”
Ruskan said he learned of the ESPY award in a call in which he was asked if he knew about Tillman, the former NFL player who left professional football to join the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks. Tillman was later was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.
Ruskan said Tillman’s legacy resonated personally because a relative was a New York City firefighter who responded on Sept. 11.
“The past winners of the Tillman Award have just been like awesome Americans,” Ruskan said. “They’ve done great things; they’ve saved lives.”
Ruskan told KSAT that he left a previous career in accounting to join the Coast Guard and felt it was a calling.
“My parents definitely had a little hard time at first being like, ‘You’re going to really leave your accounting job, and you’re gonna go join the Coast Guard?’ I said, ‘Mom, it is what I want to do. It’s exactly where I want to be.”
Ruskan said the recognition has not changed the day-to-day nature of his work and that the memory of the flooding remains with him. He also emphasized the bravery of the children and credited the entire crew.
“That’s going to be in the back of my head for the rest of my life,” he said. “And to all the kids we were able to pick up, thanks for being tough, thanks for being brave.”