A 14-year-old Montana ranch boy used his rodeo lasso to rescue a drowning man from the Yellowstone River on July 5 while camping with his family near Greycliff.
Jory Thomas, 14, was spending Fourth of July weekend at his grandparents’ house along the Yellowstone River near Greycliff, in Sweet Grass County,
when everything changed.
Four people in a raft and paddleboard had struck a bridge pier and fallen in; three managed to get to shore, but a fourth clung helplessly to a cooler, silently and swiftly moving downriver.
“We all heard, ‘Help, help,'” Thomas said. “There’s two or three people floating down the river, one hanging on to the cooler, and he wasn’t saying anything.”
Thomas emptied his pockets, took his lariat and waded out up to his chest.
“First instinct I thought was try and rope him and drag him out before he gets too far down the river,” he said. “Luckily, I caught him first try.”
“This current was pretty fast then, and he was moving pretty quickly,” said Jory. “Only thing I could focus on was helping him get out of the water because I didn’t want to see anyone go in front of me.”
Thomas slowly pulled the man through chest-deep water toward shore until first responders arrived.
“I felt pretty good afterwards that I knew he was okay and was out of the water,” said Jory.
“He comes up, and he said, ‘I think I just saved a life,'” added Sandy. “And we all said, ‘Yeah, you did.'”
His grandmother noted something extraordinary about that day.
“We come down to this campground a couple times during the summer,” she said. “Jory comes over quite frequently and has never, ever brought his lariat with him before. And that day he did.”
“I actually started really getting into roping this year,” Jory said. “I went to brandings and started roping cattle then, and I started getting better. Every afternoon when it cools off, I go out and rope the roping dummy.”
Thomas, whose father and brothers serve on the local fire department, said he knew waiting for emergency crews wasn’t an option.
“God was basically putting me in the place of all this,” he said. “God was just telling me all of this at the time and saying, ‘Go get him, you got it, and I believe in you.'”
His grandmother said his first instinct always is to help other people. “He’s always been that way,” said Sandy.
“We’ll be in town at the grocery store, and you’ll see an elderly person,” Jase, Jory’s father, told Cowboy State Daily. “They can’t pack the groceries, and he never says a word. He goes over and gets their groceries and packs them out. That’s just who he is.”
“I just thought I could help with cattle,” Thomas said. “Not really helping humans and stuff like that.”
In the viral moment captured and shared across media outlets,
Jory wandered over to visit with his parents and grandparents that afternoon, a rope already in his hand as he casually practiced throwing loops. “All of a sudden he heard some yells for help,” Jory’s father, Jase Thomas, told Cowboy State Daily. A boat had struck a bridge pillar, throwing its occupants into the Yellowstone River.
A 14-year-old obsessed with roping cattle rescued a man who’d fallen into a river Indiana Jones-style, catching him around the neck and arm with his lasso.
A deputy arrived just three minutes later and reported everyone was already out of the water.
“My opinion, Jory saved the individual’s life, 100%,” Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg told Cowboy State Daily. “Had Jory not acted, I believe the chances of this individual not making it to shore were very slim.”
Senator Steve Daines honored Jory Thomas as a Montanan of the month for his heroic actions.