(NorhtJersey.com) – Retired Passaic police officers Cheryl and Angel Casabona thought their rescue days were long behind them when they retired to Florida this past summer.
That changed Saturday when their 12-year-old son, Jake, overheard a mayday call over the radio while the three were boating off the coast of Naples, Fla.
It was a man’s voice. He “said his boat was taking on water, and that he was with another male and three children,” Angel Casabona said of the distress call in an interview with The Record this week.
The Casabonas continued to listen over the radio as the Coast Guard asked a series of routine emergency questions, but by the time the question of the boat’s exact location arose, it was too late.
The troubled boater’s final transmission was, “We’re going in the water,” Casabona said.
With little to go on but an earlier transmission in which the man had described himself as being “12 miles west of Naples,” Angel said, he and his wife set off to their aid — hoping that they were headed in the right direction.
“We’re new to the area,” he said. “We said a quick prayer, I arbitrarily pointed my boat in one direction and, about 6 miles out, I saw the capsized boat.”
When the Casabonas arrived, they did not see the five passengers. Cheryl Casabona circled the area until they found them clinging to a floating cooler in the 67-degree water, where they’d been for 35 to 40 minutes.
Jake Casabona tossed a lifesaver to the boat, and his parents pulled the two men and three children — 8-year-old triplets — aboard, and warmed them up while they awaited the arrival of the Coast Guard, the local sheriff’s office and Marco Island Fire and Rescue. “My wife put blankets on the children,” Casabona said. “They were pretty shook up.”
He was grateful everyone was OK, particularly the younger three.
