This man rescued the thirteen Thai boys from the flooded cave

June 2018, a soccer team of Thai boys has - why we actually don't know. Experiment? Group outing? - climbed into one of the many Thai caves with their coach. Due to an unexpected flood, they are, oh nightmare, stuck in one of those caves. Have you seen the movie Tangled? And then that scene where the water flows to her nose until she realizes that her hair can glow and she finds the exit? It was something like that, but without magical hair.

After ten days, when the boys have still not been found, the world seems to be losing hope, but in the meantime, thousands of volunteers are working to find the boys.

Three divers have been summoned, a firefighter, an IT worker, and a retired veterinarian. ‘Ordinary men with an extraordinary hobby,’ as they will later call themselves when they receive one award after another. Cave divers. And there are very few of their kind and caliber.

Every day they dive for 10 to 12 hours, searching for the boys while also installing cables to potentially guide them out of the cave. Eventually, they find them in the ninth cave chamber. ‘How many of you are there?’ ‘Thirteen,’ is the answer. The diver is relieved. Everyone is emaciated and exhausted, and the stench is equal to that of decomposing bodies, but they are alive. All thirteen.

Getting out is a disaster scenario. The journey is eight thousand meters through narrow shafts sometimes up to fifteen meters. Only the most experienced divers can do this, not inexperienced, weakened boys. It is thought to bring enough food to the cave so that the boys can hold out there for a few months. By that time, the water will have receded. The idea turns out to be impossible because the oxygen level in the cave is dropping rapidly. Then there is only one option: the divers take one boy at a time. Because an inexperienced diver will panic and likely become a danger to himself and the diver, they must be rendered unconscious.

The boys receive Xanax and other sedatives like ketamine and are completely strapped into a harness so that if they regain consciousness, they cannot do anything. The world rejects it, but it is the only option and the boys themselves are okay with it. Each trip takes two and a half hours. Then they can transfer the child to a medical team waiting in another cave. They do this for days. The smallest child has a head too small for the oxygen mask, but eventually, it works and all the boys have survived. An added benefit of the pain-relieving and sedative drugs: they have forgotten everything about the journey (which seems to be quite a trigger for some claustrophobic trauma).

After a documentary (The Rescue) that is now available, a feature film also comes out: Thirteen Lives. What’s nice is that each boy from the cave receives $84,000, because what heroes they are. But the real applause goes to those three ordinary men with an extraordinary hobby. One of them, Jason Mallinson, was on Jinek last night. ‘And the actor who plays you, is he a bit handsome?’ Eva asked to wrap up the conversation with a bit of joy. ‘Of course not as handsome as I am,’ was the answer from the down-to-earth and otherwise modest diver. And then I loved him even more.

Image: Jinek