| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Adnan_le_Terrible |
Posted - 04/10/2004 : 04:30:30
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Brawny movie hero and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (news) became a real life hero when he saved a cramp-stricken swimmer from possibly drowning off the coast of Hawaii, aides said.
The "Terminator" star -- used to saving people, and indeed entire planets, from terrible fates in his Hollywood movies -- spotted a man in trouble off the coast of the lush island of Maui, where he is enjoying a weeklong family holiday, and stepped in to save him on Wednesday.
"He saw a man in distress in the water and brought him back to the shore," an aide to the former Mr Universe bodybuilder and Republican politician said.
"The man was hanging onto a boogie board and the governor knew there was something wrong and asked the guy if he was OK.
"The swimmer said he had cramps all over and couldn't swim back to shore, so the governor told him to hang on and swam him 100 yards (meters) back to the beach," the source said.
The 56-year-old Austrian-born action film icon had been at the beach with his television reporter wife Maria Shriver, a Kennedy family heiress, and his four children when he went off for a swim.
He made his dramatic rescue while treading water in (six-meter) 20-foot deep ocean off the tourist resort island, picking the victim up out of the water, putting him on the board and paddling him back to shore.
Access Hollywood reported that the "Gover-nator" sat with the man on the beach for a while before telling him to "sit here for another thirty minutes."
The swimmer is reportedly well and thanked his unlikely rescuer before both resumed their holidays.
Schwarzenegger gave up his movie career after being elected governor of the most populous US state last October in a landslide vote that ousted his Democratic predecessor.
The governor's Hawaiian holiday that began on April 2 gives him an opportunity to relax after months of battling to win political and popular support for his plans to beat the state's crippling economic woes.
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