Leo is 3 years old, a golden retriever, and on January 1 he was walking with his owners through Ecola State Park, on the Oregon coast. Suddenly, the edge of the cliff gave way beneath his paws and he fell straight toward a secluded beach, eventually making his way into the icy waters of the Pacific Ocean.
What happened next seems straight out of a movie: three local fire departments and the United States Coast Guard launched an operation that included a helicopter. A rescue swimmer rappelled down into the rough sea to reach Leo, in what he himself described as his first mission of this kind involving a dog.
The helicopter transported the golden retriever to a nearby parking lot, where his owners waited without knowing whether they would see him alive again. The reunion, captured on video, went viral within hours. Sometimes the most astonishing rescue is not that of a person, but of someone who cannot ask for help with words.
