A crowd of locals and vacationers watched from behind the King and Prince hotel on St. Simons Island on Wednesday evening as rescuers aided three teenage girls who had been trapped on an ocean sandbar.

Rescue workers were called to the Arnold Street beach access point next the hotel at about 7:20 p.m. to come to the aid of the three girls, who were trapped on a sandbar after their raft floated away from them.

Calling out shouts of joy, Sarah Wagner, 18, was the first of the three to make it back shore.

“Land!” Sarah said as she paddled to the beach. “I’m saved.”

Her sister, Emily Wagner, 15, and their friend, Laura King, 15, were pulled to shore seconds later, at about 7:50 p.m., with the help of Glynn County firefighter John Baker and a bystander, Joel Moody, from Hinesville.

“We’re just so thankful they were rescued safely,” said Page Wagner, the mother of Sarah and Emily, who greeted the girls on the beach along with their grandfather, Dick Justice of St. Simons Island.

Visiting family in the area, the Wagner family and King came to St. Simons Island from Nashville, and knew about the trouble of quickly rising high tides. Before their beach trip Page Wagner said she checked tide charts to make sure she would know when the high tides were coming in. All the same, Mother Nature got the better of the group, she said.

“We tried to be as careful as we could before we came out,” Wagner said. “But I guess their raft just got away from them. I’m so glad they are safe now.”

Lt. Nate O’Brian, of the Glynn County EMS, said it was unsafe for the three teens to swim back to the beach on their own because of a strong rip tide, and a Coast Guard boat was called to the scene.

“For them to swim back on their own, it’s not a good idea,” O’Brian said.

Baker and Moody swam out about 200 yards to the girls and swam back with them for about 10 minutes.

The Coast Guard boat, though, never showed up.

The real hero of the day, said Wagner, was Moody.

Moody, a teacher in Hinesville who was once a lifeguard, was not quick to accept praise, though.

“Hero? No, I’m no hero. Well,” said Moody, with a smile, “maybe I’m a little bit of a hero.”

Although the crowd surrounding the rescue offered cheers and praise for the squad, several individuals were concerned about the perceived-to-be a slow response time and the fact that the Coast Guard boat never showed up.

Standing from her dry spot on the beach, vacationer Martine Shay was one of the onlookers who initially spotted the girls in trouble. She stood by and watched as their raft drifted away in the rising tide, and once she realized the trio was in trouble, she picked up her cell phone and called 9-1-1 for help at about 7:15, she said.

Although she said she was glad the girls were safe on shore, she voiced concern with the slow response time from the county emergency service. “It’s unfortunate this happened at all, and it’s good that things didn’t end up worse than this,” Shay said.

“I just thought rescuers would be here sooner. It seems like it took forever to even get people out here.”

The girls became stranded after lifeguards farther up the beach at the Old Coast Guard Station got off duty.