WELLINGTON, Fla. — A Wellington man who lost connection with his father on Florida's coast during Hurricane Ian rounded up a group of his close friends to go find him.
“I started texting these guys," said Matt Hernandez. “I was like, ‘I need to get there somehow, somehow to make sure that he’s alive.’”
Hernandez's friends agreed to accompany him on his journey to Pine Island to find his father.
“It was pretty much, ‘Hey we are about to go do some scary stuff,’ and it was like, ‘OK, who’s truck are we taking,’” said TJ Wagner, Hernandez’s close friend. “When we first got there, the people were like, 'What are you doing? Are you guys crazy?'”
Hernandez is a veteran, a former Army captain, and Wagner is a Riviera Beach firefighter.
“I had to know he was still there,” said Hernandez. “I wanted that proof of life.”
Regardless of the conditions, the group of friends were determined to stick it out together.
“When we launched out the beach, there was five of us that went, and I think I was the most vocal….’This doesn’t feel too safe, and everybody said ‘what are you going to stay at the truck?” said Wagner. “I said, ‘Well if you’re going, I’m going, let’s go.”
They set out to Fort Myers to locate Hernandez's father.
“Five of us took off on a two-hour trek to Pine Island across open water,” said Hernandez, who said they were worried about gas and the flat bottom boats they took to stay at the surface.
“Those boats are not meant to go fast or over open water,” he said. “I didn’t know what debris would be in the water.”
The 15-mile round trip involved a lot of “improvising.” They did it twice. Once last Thursday and then again with supplies on Sunday.
“I was driving the bigger boat and about halfway thru we started taking on a little water, so we dumped out Zephryhills bottles, so that was our bilge pump,” said Wagner.
“I was bailing water the whole time,” said Hernandez.
Eventually, they reached Hernandez's dad, who ultimately decided to stay and help neighbors.
“As an urban search and rescue medical technician, he always came in after the storm,” said Hernandez. “He was never the person in it.”
Hernandez said he still can’t talk to his dad much due to spotty cell service. But at least he knows he’s alive.
“I heard over and over you’re not going to be able to get there,” he said. “I’m not taking no for an answer. I said that over and over. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
