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Castro gave him a pair of gloves and ordered two young Marines to flank him with their bodies in order to keep him as warm as possible and shield him from the 45-degree wind whipping through the portals through which the helicopter's machine guns protruded. One of those Marines was Paul Bruce of Lebanon, Maine, a 20-year-old lance corporal who could see that the young pilot was in emotional tatters. "When he first got on the helo, he was sobbing and weeping," said Bruce. "It was more than just a tear or two. His chest was heaving -- he was so grateful and happy to be rescued."
At 12:49 a.m., just as O'Grady was being plucked from the ground in Bosnia, Lake called the President with a two-word message: "Got 'im." Replied Clinton: "Great! It sounds like this is one amazing kid."
He is a pretty amazing kid. Born in Brooklyn, New York, O'Grady grew up in Spokane, Washington, with his younger brother and sister and his parents, who divorced in 1990. He went to Lewis and Clark High School, where he played soccer and was the kicker for the football team. "When he was little he wanted to be a ninja, to get into martial arts," says Paul O'Grady, 25.
O'Grady's father headed a surgical team on a ship off North Vietnam in 1972. He used to take Scott with him in his small Cessna when the boy was 5 and 6 years old. "He always wanted to go into the Air Force," the senior O'Grady recalled. "He always wanted to be there, to fly F-16s and see action."
That dream seemed in jeopardy after O'Grady finished high school and failed to gain admission to the Air Force Academy. Determined to fly fighter jets, he set out to nail down every civilian flight certification he could, a strategy that he hoped would enable him to enter the Air Force a notch above the rest. "He was one of the best I've ever had," says Mark Wellsandt, who helped give O'Grady his primary flight training at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane and eventually became good friends with the young pilot. "You'd demonstrate a maneuver to him one time, and he was able to just pick it up and go from there. "
Wellsandt also taught the survival course at Fairchild that O'Grady took and that gave him the training he used with such focus and discipline during his six days in the woods. "I heard he ate bugs to survive, and that's taught in the school," says Wellsandt. "Knowing Scott as long as I have, I'm sure he was thinking, 'Hey, I've got other things I want to do, and if I want to do them, then I've got to get with the program.'"
O'Grady's family kept an anxious vigil all week. "When you're not in control of a situation that involves a person you love with all your heart, you go crazy," said Stacey, who was born on Scott's third birthday in 1968. That was an audacious usurpation of the limelight for which her older brother, she says, never quite forgave her and that, until now, he has been unable to undo. "You grasp for hope and a prayer." Plus one other thing. During the final two nights of O'Grady's ordeal, Stacey slept with her brother's old, well-used teddy bear. She later explained, "You cling to whatever you can."