Doran helps save a life, becomes familiar with how quickly news can spread

By MARTY BALL
sports@beeherald.com

Paton native and former Iowa State University football player Joe Doran has been the talk of the town, state and country over the past two weeks following a rescue made by Joe and a handful of his Cyclone football friends down in South Padre Island, Texas over spring break.

Doran, alongside Anthony Lazard (Urbandale), Josh Jahlas (Cedar Rapids), Spencer Benton (Van Meter), Jack Spreen (Bedford, IN) and Matt Swoyer (Southlake, TX), helped save 22-year-old Luisa Maria Castro from drowning in Laguna Madre Bay following a drunken car accident. Since the incident, many news and media sources across the entire country have covered the heroic story, including ESPN, Fox News, Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports, NBC News and USA Today, just to name a few. Doran, now focusing more on his education at Iowa State than his athletic career on the football team, said there’s been quite the unexpected buzz surrounding the whole thing.

“The news kind of just spread like wildfire, you know? It seemed like it was a pretty short amount of time before we all saw it everywhere online and on T.V.,” Doran said in a recent phone interview. “I guess with social media being the way it is, news travels even faster now, so it shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise to us. But when shows like Mike and Mike on ESPN were talking about it and Sports Illustrated wrote something on us, I was just kind of like ‘Woah that was quick’.”

Aside from all of the high-end press coverage, Doran also received more personal gestures from family members, friends and community members alike shortly after the incident. In the days following, Joe’s cellphone quickly became swamped with text messages, voicemails and phone calls, congratulating him on a job well done. He explained that after everything that’s happened, it feels good to hear from so many people, but that it’s something anyone else in his shoes would have done.

“When it comes to hearing people say “heroic act”, I enjoy it, but I think 75% of people who are put in that type of situation would’ve done the exact same thing we did,” he said. “I think it was more about being in the right place at the right time type of thing than anything else. And, you know, maybe us being Division 1 college football players had a lot more to do with the story blowing up the way it did compared to if it was just some random college kids saving a drunk person over spring break.”

One congratulatory message Doran will take away from the experience, maybe more so than any other, was a specific text he received from former Iowa State University head football coach Paul Rhoads. It read, “Great work on your heroic deeds over spring break! - Coach Rhoads.” Joe soon replied, “Thanks, Coach. I hope all is going well for you down in Arkansas!”. Doran said each of the other South Padre heroes he was vacationing with also received a text from their former football coach.

“It’s been pretty crazy these last few days and weeks,” Joe concluded. “Seems like everywhere I go now, at least around Paton and Jefferson, I’ll get a ‘What’s up, hero?’ or something like that. I really appreciate the support from everyone and hopefully a story like this can help someone else do the same thing in the future.”