A man who nearly drowned at the Jersey Shore Friday was reunited with the good Samaritan who saved his life.

Dustin Fleischer was swimming at Seven President’s Beach in Long Branch Friday evening when he got struck in a rip current.

Edrick Alleyne and his girlfriend Dawn Sicilian were at the nearby playground with their kids. Alleyne says that after only 10 minutes, someone came running for help.

“All of a sudden a guy runs up. He says, ‘My nephew, my nephew. He’s drowning,’” Alleyne recalls.

"We just looked at each other and I said ‘Go. You have to go.’...I thought it was a little boy stuck in the water,” Sicilian says.

Alleyne says that he ran to the beach and saw Fleischer’s head sticking above the water. Fleischer say that he had been in the water for about 20 minutes.

“I was totally helpless,” Fleischer says. “I thought I was going to die.”

Alleyne says that he started to yell at Fleischer to ride the waves in, but it wasn’t working.

“I saw I’m going to have to go in further to grab him,” Alleyne says. “He was looking disoriented and tired so I grabbed him and said, ‘We have to ride this last wave in.’”

The two men were finally able to get to shore.

Lifeguards say that beachgoers should not do what Alleyne did by going into the water. They say that beachgoers who witness someone in distress should call a lifeguard or 911 because the risk is too great.

But Alleyne says that he couldn’t watch a man drown. Fleischer says he’s glad that someone took the initiative to help.

"This man is my hero, my real life hero,” Fleischer says.

Beach officials issued many warnings for people to not go into the ocean this past weekend because lifeguards are no longer on duty and the rip current warning was high.

Fleischer admits that he did not listen and says that he wanted to speak about this so that people know the current is no joke.  He says he thought that since he was in good shape and a decent swimmer he would be OK.

Lifeguards say that anyone, even the strongest of swimmers, can get caught in a rip current.