Chad Greenway, a star football player for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, helped rescue two people earlier this week in questionable conditions on chilly Lake Minnetonka.
The couple, who took their new bass boat out Monday in a blowing wind kicking up choppy seas, said they lost steering and were driven near the spillway at Gray’s Bay Dam.
“We were looking at all the beautiful houses, and all of the sudden the steering wheel wouldn’t turn and we were going in circles,” Crystal Alexis told KARE 11 News in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
She and her husband, Edward, had bought the boat the previous day. The Alexises said they were waiting for help and trying to keep the boat from slamming into rocks or getting sucked over the spillway.
That’s when the 6-foot, 2-inch, 242-pound Greenway, an All-Pro linebacker who has earned “Community Man of the Year” and “Good Guy” honors, jumped into action.
“The waves are so big and the wind is so strong today that it pushed him right into the rocks, so we had to get him off the rocks, his prop cleared out of the rope and get him turned in the right direction,” Greenway told KARE 11.
He got into the water and helped push the boat into an inlet and waited with the couple until the water patrol arrived. Then he helped the deputy get the craft tied up and ready to tow.
