Tourist From Russia Dives Into Freezing Lake to Save 375-Pound Drowning Bear 😱🐻

A seemingly heartwarming story of an animal rescue spread like wildfire across social media in August 2025. The story, accompanied by photos in each post, was of a Russian tourist named Ivan Stepanov, who dove into frigid waters to rescue a sedated, drowning bear beneath the Tallac Bridge in South Lake Tahoe. According to the story, Stepanov said when asked why he risked his life, “In my country, we say a man’s strength is measured by who he chooses to protect—even if it has claws.”

A Facebook post (archived) of the story got nearly 400,000 reactions in just a couple of days. Another Facebook post (archived) of the same story got 16,000 reactions. An Instagram post (archived) sharing the story got over 40,000 likes. Several readers reached out to Snopes to ask if it was true and many others searched the site for the story.

The rescue, according to The Gainesville Sun, Tampa Bay Times and Gulf Breeze News, was the work of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist Adam Warwick in 2008. After the bear wandered too close to people’s houses, state wildlife officials shot it with a tranquilizer gun so they could move it, but the bear reacted by paddling out into the Gulf of Mexico. Warwick, believing he had only a few minutes before the tranquilizer dart took effect and the bear would drown, jumped into the water and first tried to splash it to encourage it to go back to shore. But that didn’t work, so Warwick got behind the bear, hugged it and tried swimming it to shore.

“The bear was heavy. Warwick used the animal’s buoyancy to help him haul it to shore,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote. “The animal was awake but could barely move. The bear tried to help out with a little doped-up paddling of its own.”

According to the Times, Warwick and a colleague drove the bear three hours east to Osceola National Forest the next morning. Two weeks later, the bear wandered into another residential area and Warwick found it a home at Hardee County Animal Refuge to save it from being euthanized, The Gainesville Sun reported at the time.