500-pound man rescued after 12-hour ordeal on St. Croix River in Wisconsin

A 500-pound man injured while tubing down a shallow stretch of the St. Croix River was pulled to safety Tuesday by dozens of rescue workers who spent hours carrying him to a navigable part of the waterway.

Martin Rike, 39, of Pine City, Minn., was treated for chest pain at the Burnett Medical Center in Grantsburg on Tuesday morning and discharged that afternoon, his mother said.

Rike and three friends were floating down the river on the Minnesota border in inner tubes Monday afternoon when Rike's hit a rock and deflated, said Chief Deputy Steve Ovick of the Pine County Sheriff's Office in Minnesota.

Rike told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that he went on his first tubing trip because of his doctor's suggestion to take up a fun but safe activity. But "the farther we went on the St. Croix River, the worse the conditions got."

He said he appreciated everything done to rescue him.

"Without those people, I would still be out there," he told the newspaper.

Ovick had said Tuesday morning that Rike was rafting alone, but after speaking with more rescuers, he gave the following account:

Rike's group called 911 shortly after 8 p.m. to report that he was having chest pains. A paramedic who arrived by helicopter stabilized Rike, but the pilot couldn't take him to a hospital, saying he was too heavy.

As many as 50 rescuers on the ground responded, with the first reaching Rike about 9 p.m. Crews tried to get to Rike with boats and canoes, but the watercraft ran aground in shallow water.

Rescuers tried loading him into an aluminum boat, hoping to carry him over the rocky ground. But he was so heavy that they could move the makeshift stretcher only several feet downstream per hoist.

Finally, rescuers created a floating platform by lashing three canoes together and placing four boards across them.

"That remedy worked much better, but it was still a lot of work," Ovick said. "They still had to drag those canoes all that way."

Rescuers finally got Rike to the ambulance about 8:15 a.m. Tuesday, more than 12 hours after the 911 call.

Rike wasn't in pain during the ordeal, said his mother, Sharon Rike.

"He got really cold because he was in wet clothes all night from being in the river," she said. "(Tuesday) morning, he was tired and hungry, but he was joking and trying to get warm."

Rike bruised at least one leg but was able to walk from the shore where he was stranded to the canoes, Sharon Rike said. Rescuers had limited his movement because he had symptoms of a heart attack, she said.

Even though Rike weighs 500 pounds, the truck driver is "really pretty healthy," his mother said. This was the first time he had tried tubing.