Joey Brooks

Joey Brooks

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App Saves Paddleboarder’s Life

A paddleboarder in Virginia is crediting the location app What3Words with saving her life. Rebekah Sanderlin was paddleboarding when the weather took a nasty turn. She said, “All of a sudden I found myself paddling against the tide and against the wind,”. “And it was like being on a paddleboard treadmill. I wasn’t going anywhere."

Despite her best efforts, Sanderlin was being pulled toward Chesapeake Bay, which leads to the open waters of the North Atlantic. Nearly exhausted, she called her husband on her phone and told him she was in trouble and needed help. He told her to work with the tide and wind and make her way to any piece of dry land. She did, and eventually made it to a boat dock.

Sanderlin was safe on dry land and she called her husband back, but she had no idea where she was located. “I said, ‘Okay, I’m at this boat dock,’" she says. "I don’t know what to do now. I have no idea where I am. He said, ‘Do you still have that What3Words app?’” The What3Words app assigns a three-word code for any location on Earth and Sanderlin and her husband had used the app before to meet up with friends at a concert. She checked the app and told her husband the code of "labs-piano-food," and he was able to locate her and drive to her location to pick her up. She is crediting the app with saving her life and she’s now added the app to her kids’ smartphones, just in case.

Source: WPSD Local 6

Photo Credit: Getty Images


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