As a swimmer held his side after a great white shark bit him and the masses in the water bolted toward the shore, California college student Justin Hoot ran toward the water to help.

Described as always being there when his good friends need him, Hoot helped evacuate the beach and then paddled a surfboard into the water so that lifeguards could load the victim onto it. He later told the press he learned to work as a team to achieve a goal as a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity.

“I didn’t really think about getting hurt myself,” Hoot said in an interview. “I was just worried about the worse condition of other people.”

“Let George do it!” was a saying engrained in my head during pledging, probably while drunk and in the push-up position, and it spoke, in an ironic sense, to the idea that you can’t wait for others to do what you can do yourself. Of course, at the time, we contorted it into trying to convince our pledge brothers to do the tasks assigned to us instead, but Justin Hoot took the concept and helped save a man’s life with it.

“I thought, ‘I just can’t watch it happen,’ ” he told the press. “ ‘If people are running out of the water and trying to take care of themselves, who’s going to take care of the guy?’ ”

You’re a hero, Hooters. Drinks are on me.

[via Lehigh Valley Live]