Accolades Await Young Fullerton Hero

After Fullerton seventh-grader Jeffery Miller III came home from a vacation back East, he told family and friends all about his trip: the great places he’d seen, the fun things he’d done and oh, yes, the time he saved a young boy’s life.

It never occurred to Jeffery that anyone else would be interested. By the time classes started at Nicolas Junior High this fall, his mind was on sports.

But Jeffery’s heroic action was a big deal to police in the town where it took place. So this month, the sheriff’s office in Warren County, N.Y., called the Fullerton Police Department, seeking its help in finding Jeffery.

Tuesday night, Jeffery will receive two awards at the Fullerton School District’s board meeting. One will be an Above and Beyond award from the school district. The second will be a Certificate of Appreciation from Warren County Sheriff Larry J. Cleveland, presented through the Fullerton Police Department.

“That’s cool” was Jeffery’s polite response.

His heroism occurred at the swimming pool at the Ramada Inn in Glens Falls, N.Y., in the Lake George area. Jeffery and his cousin Damon Robinson had talked their aunt into a late-night swim at their motel’s pool after dinner. Later, when she told them it was time to come out, the boys asked for one last jump into the water.

That’s when Jeffery spotted a young boy under 4 1/2 feet of water at the bottom of the pool on the other side from him. It was a boy he had noticed earlier, swimming in a shallower part of the pool.

“At first I thought he was just playing around, but then I saw he wasn’t moving at all,” Jeffery said.

Jeffery swam as fast as he could toward the boy.

“I dived down to bring him up, but I was tired from swimming across the pool and had to come up for air,” Jeffery said. At just 82 pounds himself, Jeffery knew he’d need to be at full strength to lift the smaller boy.

“So after I got some air, I dived down a second time and was able to get him up. I yelled for my cousin to help.”

The rescue came just in time.

Warren County sheriff’s investigators estimate that Raekwon Adams, 5, of Newburgh, N.Y., had been underwater for a full two minutes. Any longer and he would have drowned or suffered permanent brain damage, they said. Investigator Douglas David said: “His actions were lifesaving.”

Right before the incident, Catina Cook, Raekwon’s mother, had gone back to their room because her year-old daughter had become cranky. She had left her son with a friend, who was in the pool too, along with her own two children. But the friend had drifted over to the hot tub, thinking all three were safely in the pool’s shallow end. Cook didn’t know how her son got to the deeper water.

“He won’t talk about it to this day,” she said. “For weeks he woke up with nightmares. But he’s starting to get over it.”

Cook never got to thank Jeffery. She returned from the hospital after learning her son would survive, only to discover Jeffery had gone to bed. Then his family left the motel early the next morning.

“I do want to thank him,” she said, “for giving me back my son.”

Jeffery’s mother, Donna Miller, who wasn’t along on the trip, is extremely proud of her son’s quick thinking. But there is a particular reason why this act of bravery was so special, she said:

“When Jeffery was 3 years old, he almost drowned, himself.

“We were at a pool and I had turned my head for just a minute to talk to one of Jeffery’s brothers,” she said. “Yet in that short time, there he was, gone, the bottom of the pool. He came out of it OK, but for a time there I thought for sure he was going to die.”

For the next several years, she said, no one in the family could get Jeffery near the water. “It took a lot of work to convince him to give it a try.”

For Jeffery, it will be especially thrilling that one of the awards is coming from the school district. Jeffery already knows what he wants to be in life: an elementary school teacher.

“I do pretty good with young kids,” he said.