It’s hard to tell who was more excited when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson met Jacob O’Connor, 10, whom he has described as a “real-life hero.”
Jacob made headlines last month when he saved the life of his 2-year-old brother, Dylan. The toddler had fallen into their grandmother’s swimming pool in Roseville, Michigan, and Jacob pulled his brother out of the water when he found him facedown. Then he remembered a scene from his favorite movie, “San Andreas,” in which Johnson performs CPR on his on-screen daughter. Jacob started giving chest compressions to his brother.
“The movie just popped up in my head and I started thinking about that scene,” Jacob recalled to The Washington Post. “And that’s when I started doing the compressions.”
Johnson soon caught wind of the story. The actor told Jacob he was “proud” of his quick thinking and extended an invitation to the kid and his family to fly to Vancouver, Canada, where he’s currently filming his next film.
“I gotta shake the hand of a real life 10yr old hero,” Johnson said Aug. 26 in an Instagram post.
Johnson and Jacob met face-to-face on Tuesday. The actor said Jacob was nervous and shy during the meeting, but that “it was fun getting him to laugh and talk.”
“What a special day. What a special kid. Thanks Jacob for being awesome and for being the kind of person we all aspire to be,” Johnson said.
The actor added that Jacob had touched a nerve when he showed up to the set wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Johnson holding his two dogs, Brutus and Hobbs, who he once had to rescue from a pool.
“Seeing that picture on this boy’s shirt, got me in the gut,” Johnson wrote. “Eventually, we would lose Brutus to heaven, but it wasn’t the picture of Brutus that made me tear up, it was the fact that this 10-year-old kid, had a heart big enough to put our puppies on his shirt after he saved his little 2-year-old brother’s life.”
Fans of Johnson ― and Jacob ― tweeted praise.
“You are a good guy @TheRock,” wrote one user. “Nicely done!”
“Amazing what Jacob did! What a super hero,” wrote another.