Officials Credit 2 Azusa Youths With Saving Boy, 10, From River

When Richard Lopez and Raymond Villegas pedaled away from their homes last Saturday afternoon, they had no idea they’d come back heroes.

But half an hour into their bike ride along the San Gabriel River, the teen-agers proved to be just that.

Los Angeles County Fire Department officials credit the pair with saving the life of Leonardo Rico, 10, who was stranded in the river’s current after wading in to retrieve his hat.

Raymond, 14, dove into the river after a cousin of the stranded boy flagged them down on the bike path that runs parallel to the waterway.

Richard, 12, remained on the shore and helped drag the two out of the water when they made it back to the river’s edge.

Raymond said that when Leonardo’s cousin first approached them on the bike path about a quarter mile north of Foothill Boulevard, he and Richard thought the boy was joking. “He said his cousin was drowning, but we didn’t believe him,” Raymond said.

But when it became clear that someone was in trouble, he said, they acted quickly. Kicking off his sneakers and throwing his T-shirt aside, Raymond dove into the chilly water and swam about 40 feet to the middle of the river. There, he grabbed the exhausted Leonardo under the armpits and dragged him to shore.

“He had his eyes closed, and after (getting back to shore) I went, ‘Hey, you’re going to be all right,’ ” Raymond said.

But Raymond admitted that he, too, was scared. “I was thinking, I don’t know if I could make it all the way out there,” he said.

Raymond, who will be a freshman at Gladstone High School in Covina in the fall, said he had never done anything like this before and felt proud to have helped someone.

Richard said he and Raymond just did what they had to. “I was thinking, ‘What if it was me out there and nobody would help me?’ ” he said. “If the kid would have died it would have been our fault, kind of.”

Leonardo was taken to Santa Teresita Hospital in Duarte for observation and released.

Fire Capt. Jose Lopez (no relation to Richard) said Leonardo and Raymond were lucky to make it out of the water.

“In a lot of areas, especially along that stretch . . . you could get killed very easily,” Lopez said. Turbulence at the base of a dam about 100 yards down the river could have battered them against the concrete or drowned them, he said.

“They saved that boy’s life,” he said.