Cool-Head Luke : Rescue: A Moorpark 8-year-old stays calm and uses his Cub Scout training to save his 3-year-old brother.

Seth Bowen had sunk to the bottom of his family’s Jacuzzi when his 8-year-old brother Luke found him. True to the Scout motto, Luke was prepared.

The slim youngster “went right in after 3-year-old Seth and helped him breathe” by performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which he learned in Cub Scouts, said the boys’ father, Ray Bowen.

“If Luke didn’t have that skill and had panicked, all would have been lost,” Bowen said.

While Luke was trying to revive Seth, his 10-year-old sister, Kamlyn, ran into the Moorpark house, told her mother what had happened and then called 911, Bowen said.

“None of the kids froze up--no one lost control,” Bowen said proudly.

Seth was taken by paramedics to Los Robles Regional Medical Center on Tuesday, where he was kept overnight for observation. He was released Wednesday afternoon. Doctors said the boy was underwater for less than five minutes and did not suffer permanent damage, Bowen said.

“It could have gone the other way very, very easily,” he said.

The children’s father credits Luke’s Cub Scout leader, Terry Halbleib, with teaching her den of about 14 boys to “take care of themselves, survive and help other people. She’s just a super lady--we owe her a lot.”

Halbleib, a 31-year-old housewife and mother, has taught the boys first-aid techniques, bicycle safety and drug prevention awareness, Bowen said.

“The Cub Scout motto is be prepared and do your best, and that means in any situation, good or bad,” said Halbleib, who visited the Bowens Wednesday to drop off homemade chili and a chocolate cake. “I’m not surprised Luke and his sister handled this so well. Luke is the kind of boy you can count on to come through. Whenever I need a report on what the boys learned, I always call on him.”

Bowen said his wife and children had been heating up the Jacuzzi on Tuesday when the incident occurred. Unknown to the family, Seth had slipped out the back door and fallen into the spa, he said.

But Seth did not appear to be afraid of the water Wednesday, his father said. “He feels very comfortable and was playing out in the back near the pool like nothing had happened.”