A 10-year-old girl from Greensboro rescued from a rip current at Myrtle Beach recently described the frightening ordeal and her gratitude for the man who saved her.

Summer McCallum was rescued the night of Friday, Aug. 7, by Derrick Moore, from Georgia, who drowned after the rescue. Moore, 47, a father of four and a teacher, is being remembered for his heroic act.

"I was just scared, and then my feet couldn't touch the ground," Summer McCallum recalls, saying she tried to swim and float, but the current was relentless.

"The wave just kept going over my head," she said.

Her uncle, Ernest McCallum, said he was on the shore packing up their things for the day.

"I turned around, and I saw her head just looking straight up at the sky," he said. "I'm thinking, she must be playing, because I [had] just seen her and everything was fine."

Moments later, he ran in after his niece.

"I'm swimming, and I'm not feeling anything under my feet," he described. "I continued to swim in the water, it was crazy, you know, the waves hitting me."

While Ernest McCallum fought to get to his niece, a few good Samaritans jumped in to help. Moore was among them.

"I saw him coming, and he was like, 'Grab my arm,' and I grabbed it, but he was also struggling once he got to me," Summer McCallum described.

The others reached the pair with a float. The 10-year-old made it back to shore, but Moore did not.

"I thought he was still out there trying to, like, swim or something," the girl described.

Moore's body surfaced the next day.

"He saved my life because I didn't have to go back out there, and he certainly saved my niece's life," Ernest McCallum described. "He just became a hero to us all."

Summer McCallum said she knows exactly what she would tell him if she could.

"I would say thank you," she said. "I really owe my life to you."

Her mom, Kamille Raines, was home in Greensboro when Ernest McCallum called that night. She said she immediately knew something was wrong.

"He was quiet," Raines said. "I said 'hello,' and he was quiet, and I said, 'Are you ok?' He said no. I said, 'Is my baby ok?' and he said yes."

Raines said she has spent the days since thinking about how different that phone call could have been, and she's now cherishing every precious second with her daughter.

"It feels like taking my next breath -- it feels like the greatest gift," she described.

Raines will never get to meet Moore, but she said she'll spend her life thanking him.

"I'm just thinking about his mom," she said. "Because of Derrick, I don't have know what it feels like to lose a child."

Even at just 10 years old, Summer McCallum said she'll carry gratitude for that stranger on the beach for the rest of her life.

"I get to go back to school and love my family more than I did," she said.

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