Gloucester Girl Scout Troop 1427 co-leader Sherri Sliker stayed true to the Girl Scout motto "Be prepared" two weeks ago when she helped save a man from drowning.

A waterfront supervisor and leader of the canoe program for scouts at the Burkes Mill Pond Camp in Gloucester, as well as an American Red Cross small craft safety instructor, Sliker spent Saturday, March 23, leading an outdoor certification class for adult scout leaders at the Colonial Coast Council’s Camp Darden near Franklin.

The group was learning to prepare lunch over an open fire pit at the pond-side camp when someone mentioned a noise they had all been hearing in the background. Sliker said it was a yelpy sound, as though a neighbor at one of the homes across the pond were repeatedly calling a dog, but Sliker was so intent on teaching the class that she hadn’t paid much attention.

Then suddenly the quality of the sound changed, and someone said, "there’s a ‘p’ on that sound&mdash...