The Thames Green Bottles are a group of rowers who meet twice a week at the Ahoy Centre to row on the River Thames. One cold November morning at dawn, as they prepared to launch their boat, they discovered a man trapped in the slipway, sheltering from the river. He was shivering, disorientated, and unable to speak. One of the rowers, Claire, recognised him from a recent missing person post on Facebook and immediately contacted emergency services. While waiting for help to arrive, the group stayed with him, wrapped him in warm clothing and reassured him. He was a non-verbal man with learning difficulties who had been missing from his care home for four days. After being found, he spent several days recovering in hospital. Later, the Metropolitan Police confirmed the rowers had likely saved his life. His mother later wrote to the Ahoy Centre to thank them for bringing her son safely home…..
“ I wanted to reach out to you to extend a huge and sincere thanks for helping to reunite my missing son with his family on Thursday 6 November!! When we thought all hope of finding him was gone your kindness and duty of care made it possible for a family to be whole again after four excruciatingly painful days of searching and hoping. As you can imagine the last couple of weeks have been intense with my son spending four days in hospital after he was found, but I knew I had to reach out to The Ahoy Centre to offer my personal thanks to the wonderful member of your team who discovered him at the nearby beach.“
