What started as a half day of playing hooky with two of his children nearly ends in disaster when a Tampa boater’s son is struck by lightning. Here’s his story—and why you need to know CPR.
It’s any parent’s worst nightmare. Derek Stock, a prudent boater out of Tampa was enjoying a fun-filled day on the water with his wife and two of his children when disaster struck just a hundred feet from the boat ramp; his 11-year-old son was struck by lightning. Thanks to lifesaving CPR training. He was able to save his son, and his mission now is to help other boaters avoid tragedy.
POWER & MOTORYACHT: If you don’t mind, can you walk us through that day? How did it start out?
DEREK STOCK: Yeah, sure. So I have a small flats boat; Tampa is very shallow. We fixed it up over two years, put a brand new Suzuki on it. It’s great for fishing. It’s kind of just easy to scoot around and get out on the water. I have four children. Maya’s 15, Toby’s 12, Levi, the one who was struck is 11 and then Ivy is 9. And that week my two oldest were off at summer camp. So we thought, “hey, I got this opportunity to take half a day. It’s a beautiful day, let’s go out in the boat.”
This was Thursday June 30th; we left with the intent of doing some inshore fishing in the mangroves, try to catch some fish and then maybe do a little bit of swimming. So that’s what we did—took a half a day at work. So around 1:00 p.m.—Tampa Bay can be choppy most of the time and it was actually one of the more glassy days on the bay that I’ve seen in a while. Unbeknownst to me, an hour later, my son’s gonna get struck by lightning.
There’s a common little island in Tampa Bay called Beer Can Island. It’s just a cool place to kind of pull up and swim. I’m probably one of the more proactive, safety conscious boaters. Safety is always my priority. So I’m looking east towards Florida. And then I see the dark clouds forming, but there are no strikes yet. And the wind was actually in our favor. The wind was going west to east, even though the clouds were out there, I’ve been out there before where, even though the clouds are going west to east, the development of the storm actually develops east to west faster than the wind can push it away.
So I was familiar with that in my mind. There were maybe 15 boats on that beach on a Thursday hanging out, having fun. And I feel like I was the first or second one to leave. And right about that time we started motoring I started seeing striking off in the distance and I’m thinking, oh, I need to get out of open water and get into the river. We got close to the ramp, so I was at idle speed at that point. My son’s standing on the deck with the line, getting ready to dock so I can go get the trailer and we can get out of there. And another boat was leaving at that time.
I’m sitting back on this cushion—picture, a little center console with a cushion in the back and then a cooler in front of that center console that my daughter was sitting on. My wife was sitting on the cooler kind of cleaning everything up. So the other interesting thing that all the media didn’t know is, we got calls from New York and The Weather Channel interviewed us and they’re picturing this torrential downpour of a storm and clouds everywhere. In reality, it was broad daylight and sunny. And there was another boat, a little Pathfinder that was leaving. And I remember thinking, why are these goofballs going out in this? And right about that time, praise God that I was looking, but I saw the strike go through my son.
PMY: I have a knot in my stomach waiting for this part of the story.
DS: Yeah, it’s the hardest part of the story. It’s a brackish river. It’s real dark. It’s turbid. It’s not a clean river. He went over the starboard side. And like I said, it looked like an ultimate fight knockout or a boxing match. His chin went down and he went straight like a pencil. I didn’t think I was gonna get to him. He’s a skinny little kid and he started disappearing on me quick. I was able to catch him though and get his head above water. And the guys that I thought were crazy, I’m thankful they were in the area. The motor died when my son was struck, so my wife and my youngest daughter, they were floating away from us. They were fine, but they were floating away from me and him.
And then that other boat came back around. I’m screaming to them. And so they came back and got Levi up into the boat. And then I got up in the boat and I just started chest compressions right away. I’ve been trained in CPR as part of the electric company that I work for. So I had to do it every year. So it was fresh in my mind and I just started right away.
He wasn’t moving. He was in his swimsuit with his shirt off so I could see nothing was moving. His eyes were rolled back and it felt like an eternity. But from the time that I got up in that other boat is when my wife called 911. The Hillsborough County Sheriffs showed up in four minutes. So I mean, again, it felt like an eternity and as I was doing compressions, his eyes rolled back. He wasn’t responding. And there’s a point where I was thinking, “I’m pushing on my dead son” but I just kept going, praying through the compressions. The Sheriffs put an AED on him. He put the pads on and it says, “Standby.” And it says, “Pulse not detected, standby.” So he was going in and out of having a pulse being detected. The ambulance showed up and he still didn’t have a pulse or wasn’t breathing. And the ambulance took him to Tampa General Hospital. It’s a very good hospital in Tampa, very popular.
So they took him away but I never saw him breathing. We weren’t allowed to—neither one of us were allowed to go in the ambulance. I don’t know if it was because of Covid or what.
When we got there, two chaplains show up and two sheriffs and it was like, sir, we need to find a private room. And I’m trying to read faces—and I’m like, “you fixing to tell me he’s dead? Are you trying to tell me he is dead? Is a doctor coming down?” It was like 45 minutes before I knew if he was dead or alive. So I learned that basically when you get a strike, the doctors say your whole body reboots; he was alive but screaming. He was screaming, but he wasn’t talking. He didn’t have any conversation. He wasn’t responsive. But the kid was screaming. So I’m like, OK, praise God, he is alive. But what is the new normal? I mean, is there neurological damage? I’m texting everybody: Just please pray for my son.
At 2:00 a.m. he said two words, he said it hurts. So at that point it’s like, OK, he’s responding. The following day the doctors came back. They did a scan of his brain and the scan of his full body. And again, praise God, there was nothing. And I broke down when they said they expect a full recovery. The crazy part was that it struck him, out of all the sailboats and masts around us. But the other part is that it entered his tailbone and then exited his left foot.
I think it went to the water or grounded in the water because it blew a two-inch patch off the gelcoat right off the bow. The crazy part is his strike went through him and flashed up his back so his hair was melted and the back of his neck skin was basically, like, peeling. He was in the hospital for five days. He actually went home on Independence Day, July 4th.
That last day the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s showed up and gave him a toy Thor hammer. When the officers showed up, I was thinking we have to fill out another report, but they were just visiting. I gave ‘em a big bear hug and just thanked them for everything they did.
PMY: Did the doctors ever say what role your chest compressions had on saving his life?
DS: He said nine out of ten people survive strikes. And I was like, what? And he’s like, yeah, it’s the response after that makes all the difference. So that was kind of hard to soak in. And right around that time, there was a resident doctor in the hospital and he said, yeah, typically we see seven or eight strike victims a year. And I was like, wow, that’s a lot. But I’m thinking Tampa’s 10 million people, I guess that’s understandable. But he said they had somebody that was struck and that people stood there for 15 minutes waiting for the EMT to show up and the person passed away because there was no blood flow to the brain.
So my message is even if you don’t get CPR certified, go on YouTube. See how it’s done. Talking with the doctors—they’re always changing the breaths. But the doctors are like, if you do anything, if you just do compressions, you’ll keep that blood circulation going and not have neurological damage.
I sometimes think, what if I was looking at different direction? What if I wouldn’t have reached him in the water? But the big one is what if I didn’t know how to do CPR? You know, what if I’m standing there? Cause I could tell when the guys in the other boat that pulled us up, they had no clue what to do. They were freaked. I could tell—their eyeballs, they were just glassing over. And obviously you’re gonna do whatever you can to keep your son alive. And I pray that nobody ever has to do CPR on their own child, but it kept him alive and I’d hate for anybody to not be equipped. And it’s just been in my heart to share it as much as I can.
