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"He's having a seizure!" a voice cried out from the bow of the Hoo's Up.
Harrison Grandey, 11, from Dublin, Ohio, who came to Hilton Head Island with a friend's family, had fallen asleep at the bow of the boat six hours into the eight-hour charter. Suddenly, he fell from his sleeping position and began to convulse, beginning an ordeal in which Thiess saved his life.
"I first heard this faint murmur, and I thought, 'He's having a nightmare,' " said Mark Wallar, the father of Harrison's friend and his chaperone. "Then I saw him go down into the fetal position, and it looked really bad. That's when I screamed for the captain."
Thiess, 25, of Bluffton ran to Harrison, held the boy's arms down as he and Wallar began to pour ice from the bait cooler onto the flailing child.
"He was burning up, and we needed to cool him off," Thiess said. "That's all we had."
The seizure seemed to last an hour, but it subsided after only a minute or two, the men said.
That's when things got worse.
"His pulse was racing. Then it got slower, and slower, then it just stopped, and I couldn't find it anymore," Thiess said. "His eyes rolled into the back of his head. My first thought was, 'Oh my God, he's dead.' I knew this little boy had just died in my arms."
Wallar, his two sons and Harrison had commissioned the boat that left the dock at Hilton Head Harbour RV Resort and Marina to fish for cobia at the Betsy Ross Reef, about 15 miles offshore. Wallar knew of Harrison's benign rolandic epilepsy, a disorder that generally subsides during adolescence. His last seizure had been 15 months ago, and no one expected any problems. His parents approved the boat trip.
As the boy was dying on the boat's deck, Wallar frantically called his wife, who called Harrison's mother to relay the news and get his medical information to give to the doctors on shore.
Thiess had to make a decision -- wait for a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to basket-lift the boy to Savannah Memorial University Medical Center, or begin CPR and make the 15-mile journey back to port.
"Cut the lines!" he yelled to his first mate. "Cut the anchor, just cut it all. We're going in!"
He began CPR, and within a few minutes, the boy regained consciousness. Thiess once again found Harrison's pulse in the carotid artery. It took about 30 minutes to reach Harbour Town, the closest dock, where paramedics from the Hilton Head Fire and Rescue Division waited. Thiess remained on the phone with the Coast Guard all the way in, and a nearby boat followed Thiess' 40-mph trek back to shore as back-up.
Harrison spent a few hours at Hilton Head Hospital for observation, but he was released later that night, Wallar said. Wallar and the boys returned home Sunday night. Harrison is undergoing a battery of tests to find out what caused the seizure, but he has been in good health since his ordeal last week, Michaela Grandey, his mother, said Monday.
She hopes to speak with Thiess and thank him for saving Harrison's life.
"Under those circumstances of being on a bobbing boat and having all of this going on around him, he kept his composure and saved Harrison," Grandey said. "I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't been there and been so quick to react."
Thiess was relieved to hear Harrison was doing better and hopes to speak with him and his family soon.
Thiess has never had a major injury on his boat, he said. Generally, he's the one that gets hurt, he said with a laugh as he began to recite a list of the scrapes, cuts and places he's had hooks embedded.
"This was definitely something new," he said. "I'm glad I could help, but I don't want to go through that again."
The night of the ordeal, while Harrison slept in the hotel room, Wallar took Thiess out for dinner. They ate what they caught and shared fish tales.
Wallar has a new favorite fishing story now -- the time the captain saved a life.
