Shavarsh Karapetyan was an Armenian swimmer. In 1976, he
took a sixteen-mile run around Yerevan Lake with his brother, Kamo. Suddenly, he
heard a loud crash. A trolley had lost control and fallen into the water. It
was 82 feet away from the shore and quickly sank to a depth of 33 feet. Shavarsh
dived in after it. He kicked out the back window of the trolley, though the
water was murky. Of the 92 passengers onboard, Shavarsh pulled out 46. Twenty
of them survived. Because of the cold water and lacerations from glass shards he
was hospitalized 45 days. He developed pneumonia and sepsis. He recovered, but damage
to his lungs prevented him from continuing his career as a swimmer. In 1974, he
saved passengers on a driverless bus that started rolling downhill. In 1985, he
saved several people trapped in a burning building. Shavarsh is seventy now,
still living in Armenia.
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