“We just saw this wave come up and sweep this lady off the rocks and start dragging her out to sea,” Wright told CNN. “It all happened very fast and we kind of had to take action immediately.”
The 24-year-old surfer managed to reach out to the woman and hold her while the waves crashed against them, talking to her repeatedly.
“I said, ‘Let’s be fine,'” said Wright. “’You will enter. It’s all right.’ And I kept telling her that and kept telling her to just wait and not let go. “
As they were approaching the shore and beginning to rise, a great wave of water came. Wright jumped while holding the woman to avoid the impact of the waves and the sharp rocks below them.
When Mikey Wright and the woman got close enough, Tyler and the group helped pull the pair safely to the beach. The woman was not identified.
After the two were safely on the coast, the woman thanked him several times, said he was fine and had no deep cuts, Wright said. “I think I’m a little shocked,” said Wright, who she told him.
The woman’s son ran and thanked the surfer through his tears, Wright said.
“It was very emotional and (he) kept saying, ‘Thank you. You saved my mom. I thought she was dead,'” he said. “It was a very special moment.”
The North Shore Lifeguard Association praised Wright and the public for the rescue.
There was a high wave alert in the area on the day of the incident, according to the National Weather Service. The waves reached up to 15 feet that day.
Wright said the woman was not trying to get into the water.
“That lady had no intention of swimming. It was a 15 foot wave about where she was,” said Wright. “The wave had come and dragged it out.”
He warned people that the ocean can be unpredictable.
“Always be alert,” he said. “You never know what the ocean can do. And don’t turn your back on it for a second.”
Wright was in Hawaii for the 2020 Billabong Pipeline Masters event, held December 8-20.
This is not the first time Wright has had to save someone from the waves. He grew up in Culburra Beach, Australia, where he and his brothers saw people dragged into the ocean.
“It’s just something that, growing up in Australia or in a small seaside town, you learn life skills,” he said.
Despite saving the woman, the surfer said that true heroes are the lifeguards of everyday life.
“It is a very good compliment, but the real heroes are the ones who do it day after day here on the North Shore,” he told CNN. “The North Shore Lifeguard Association, they save our lives when we’re sailing on pipelines. They helped my brother. They’ve helped me before.”
Lifeguards were busy saving someone on the beach while Wright helped the woman, he said.
“They really had something else going on on the beach that someone needed to save,” he said. “For me to be able to help, it was a good time.”
Robert Shackelford and CNN’s Tyler Mauldin contributed to this report.