6-year-old tosses life jacket to drowning man, saves life (PHOTO)

J.C. French has an amazing arm for a 6-year-old.

He proved just how amazing Saturday afternoon when he saved a man’s life.

J.C. was on vacation with family and friends at Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort when he and his mom, Lisa, kayaked out to a sandbar in the gulf to hunt for sand dollars. They were about to head back to shore about 3 p.m. when J.C. said he could hear something.

Lisa was in the water and holding onto the kayak. She said the kayak blocked her view of a man struggling in the water nearby. She didn’t hear anything, but J.C. did.

“I heard him saying help,” J.C. said in a telephone interview from his home in Milton, Ga. “(The man was) a little like two feet away.”

His mom said it actually was about 50 feet. Lisa told J.C. to throw the man her lifejacket, which she had left in the kayak. J.C. stood up in the kayak, aimed and threw the lifejacket right to him.

“It was like dead on. It was just crazy,” Lisa said. “I would not have been able to throw that man a jacket, as far as he was … there’s no telling where it would have gone.”

Lisa then pushed the kayak to the man. She said he was in deep water, far from the shallow area where she and J.C. were looking for shells.

They reached the man clinging to the lifejacket and had him grab the side of the kayak.

“He grabbed on for dear life,” she said.

They brought him to shore with the help of another kayaker.

“He kept saying, ‘Thank you so much. A couple of more seconds and I wouldn’t have made it,’ ” Lisa said.

Lisa and her husband knew J.C. had a good arm. He was an outfielder and catcher for his all-star baseball team.

In fact, the team’s state championship win was part of the reason the French family, together with J.C.’s teammate Jake Peacock and his family, vacationed at Sandestin.

J.C. says football is his favorite sport.

“I score lots of touchdowns and it’s really fun,” he said.

His accuracy and good arm earned J.C. the quarterback position. The weekend rescue confirmed he will be a natural.

He surprised his mom with the rescue. She expected him to be too afraid to listen to her instructions.

“It was just crazy that he just reacted, did exactly what he was told and was so cool, calm and collected about it,” Lisa said. “And it wasn’t until the very end when he said, ‘I’m so scared.’ ”

J.C. and his mom found only two sand dollars Saturday.

“I have one. I gave the other one to the man. I wanted to be nice,” J.C. said.

Lisa said J.C. and the man never exchanged names.

J.C. delivered the sand dollar with one message.

“He told him to keep it for good luck,” Lisa said.