Coast-Guard Facts

In 2021, KPMG offered accountant Scott Ruskan a full-time job. He said no and joined the Coast Guard instead. On his very first mission as a rescue swimmer - the July 2025 Texas rising waters - he saved 165 people at a summer camp. He was the only rescuer on scene for four hours.

Two 14-year-old boys climbed to God's Thumb - a sheer volcanic bluff on the Oregon coast - and froze 30 feet from the top. A firefighter climbed up to rescue them and got stuck too. Coast Guard lowered a crew member from a helicopter and hoisted all three off the cliff face.

Lake Michigan turned crystal clear turquoise in April 2015. A Coast Guard helicopter crew spotted something incredible on patrol. Complete century-old shipwrecks sat visible on the lake floor below them. The James McBride was a 121-foot brig that sank in 1857. It rested in 5 to 15 feet of water. Nearby, the Rising Sun wrecked in 1917 with all 32 aboard rescued. The lake holds an estimated 1,500 shipwrecks, and several remain unidentified.

USCGC Eagle led America's 250th birthday parade through New York Harbor on July 4, 2026. The three-masted tall ship started life in 1936 as the Horst Wessel, training future officers for Hitler's navy. The US took her in 1946 as compensation after World War II. Nearly every Coast Guard Academy graduate since has trained aboard the same ship.