Five years ago, on June 23, 2018, 12 members of the Thai soccer team “Wild Boars,” ages 11 to 16, along with their coach entered the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex in northern Thailand for what was to be a short exploration, without packing food or water.
However, while exploring the cave, heavy monsoon rains quickly flooded the cave system blocking the group’s way out and trapping them deep inside the cave.
For more than two weeks the world held its breath while teams of experts and rescuers from around the globe launched a massive search and rescue mission.
After being trapped deep inside the flooded cave for 18 days, the world’s prayers were answered: All 12 boys and their soccer team coach were finally rescued.
At The Moderate Voice, we covered the story, conveying how, after nine days, two members of an elite British diving team, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, located the entire group alive on an elevated rock ledge about a mile-and-a-half from the entrance to the cave.
Intensive and complicated rescue efforts would continue for another week with thousands of experienced divers, SEALs, medical, security personnel and military from several countries participating and humanity holding its collective breath until the last boys were rescued on July 10.
The celebration of the miracle in Thailand was only tempered by the tragic loss of one of the brave rescuers, Royal Thai Navy SEAL Saman Gunan, who died of asphyxiation after delivering oxygen tanks to the trapped group in the cave.
Sadly, 18 months later, another Thai Navy Seal, Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection contracted during the operation.
A couple of weeks after the “Miracle in a Thailand Cave,” we followed up with a “Good Story that Keeps on Giving,” where we reported that, after being kept under medical observation for 10 days in a local hospital, the boys and their coach “walked out as international celebrities, having gained six pounds on average after having lost an average of nine pounds during their 18-day ordeal.”
Of course, the members of the Wild Boars soccer team were anxious to savor the meals and treats absent from the hospital menu, delicacies they had dreamed of during their ordeal.
We mentioned that for one of the young boys, Adul Samon, then fourteen, “it was Kentucky fried chicken.”
Five years later, the happy story still keeps on giving.
In 2020, Adul began studying at The Masters School outside of New York City with a full scholarship. His love for soccer never left him and he became captain of his school’s soccer team.
On Friday, during ABC’s “World News Tonight” and in the segment “Our Person of the Week,” anchor David Muir paid tribute to Adul, who is now 19, and shared Adul’s inspiring story of survival, perseverance and, now, success as Adul graduates from The Masters School and is on his way to Middlebury College in Vermont hoping to eventually become a doctor.
But perhaps the best part of the story has to do with who delivered the commencement address at The Masters School graduation ceremony and with who was on the stage with Adul when he received his diploma.
Remember the British diver who, along with another diver, located the group deep inside the cave on the tenth day of the search effort?
It was Adul’s rescuer, Rick Stanton, who gave the commencement address and was on stage with Adul when he received his diploma.
After quipping that “as a cave explorer,” he had spent his life “as far from the classroom as one can get,” Stanton said thoughtfully, “I hadn’t realized that my entire life had been spent preparing for that moment.”
In an interview, Stanton told Muir:
It’s great to see [Adul’s] development from when he was a vulnerable child to being an adult and going to medical school…how amazing is that…I am very proud of the fact hat I was partly responsible for his, you know, his life, in a way. And to see him make the most of the opportunities he’s had…
On his part, Adul told Muir, “We have to keep adjusting to the environment where you are in order to survive. You have to keep adapting your life…This is just incredible, it is this miracle. I never thought I would come this far, and I would be sitting here in the United States.”
We thought we’d share some uplifting news with our readers this weekend.
