The Real First Responders

“I honestly thought I was going to lose my family that day,” Roberta Ursrey said. “It was like, ‘Oh God, this is how I’m going.’ ”

The children went for a swim, got caught in a riptide.  The parents went after the children.  They were all going to drown.

“These people are not drowning today,” [Jessica] Simmons remembered telling herself. “It’s not happening. We’re going to get them out.”

She and her husband organized a human chain; eighty people; one-hundred yards into the water; swimmers and...