Bryan Dean of Winston was lying in bed, listening to his scanner, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21 as the rain poured down outside. He didn’t realize at the time that he would help save five lives before dawn.

“I heard traffic about people being stuck in trees,” he said. “They were saying they could hear somebody but couldn’t get to them. I just couldn’t stay there knowing that.”

So Dean, a Villa Rica health club operator at Defkon One and former deputy, grabbed some life jackets and dive gear, got in his truck and headed to Cedar Mountain Road. There he pulled a man to safety. He remembers the man’s name only as “Doral.”

Once Dean was back in his truck, he heard on the scanner about a man trapped in water on Queens Road, behind Alexander High School.

“I parked near the water’s edge, got on my life jacket and headed through the water,” he recalled.

Dean recounted finding Kenneth Cranford clinging to a tree, then getting a rope around him and leading him to safety.

Cranford vividly recounted more details of the rescue from his car that had been swept 200 feet downstream.

“I felt like I was in the car about four lifetimes,” Cranford said. “Water was getting up to my chest, so I got into the back seat where there was still some air.”

He finally made his way out of the car before it sank and he grabbed onto a nearby tree.

“The fire department finally found me, but they couldn’t get over to me,” Cranford said. “They tried throwing a rope but couldn’t get it through the limbs. Then I looked behind me and saw Bryan. I thought he was walking on water. He came down, grabbed me and said, ‘you’re coming with me.’ He had a rope and tied it onto me.”

Three weeks after the incident, Cranford said he still doesn’t know how Dean made it to him.

“I don’t know how he knew I was down there,” he said. “He was like an angel sent by God. As soon as he got me to the ambulance, he was gone to help other people.”

Dean then headed to Stewart Mill Road where he heard three men were trapped in a van at the Reynolds Road intersection.

“The men were on their way to open the Target Store (on Chapel Hill Road) when the water swept their van off the road,” he said. “They were trapped in their vehicle.”

With the help of Douglas County fire fighters, Dean tied a line to himself and waded into the deep water. He dragged the men, one by one, to safety.

Dean said he helped the sheriff’s department pull submerged cars from Banks Mill Road later that morning, but unfortunately, they had bodies in them.

Three weeks after the rescues, Dean declined to take credit for his actions.

“I’m not a hero, nor did I save anyone,” Dean insisted, as he recalled the incidents. “Jesus Christ saved us a long time ago. I guess in this situation, I was ‘a fisher of men’ that helped them out of a bad situation. The real heroes are the men and women in law enforcement, the military and fire department who protect us every day.”