The Red Cross honored two men who rescued a skier out of a life-or-death emergency.

And after John McCartney and Steve Swanson saved the skier, they found out she was McCartney's wife, Laurie.

John McCartney went to Crystal Mountain with his wife Laurie following 5 new inches of snow. He was a few minutes behind his wife on his way down when something caught his eye.

"I saw these wiggly skis and I thought, 'Where did that person come from?' " he said.

What he saw was a skier stuck upside down in a tree well -- or a pocket of air created around the base of a tree in deep snow.

McCartney knew the skier needed to pulled out right away. He knew it was a matter of life and death, but he also knew he couldn't do it by himself.

He reached out to a complete stranger.

"I yelled, 'I need your help now!' and he came flying up," he said.

That man was Steve Swanson, and together he and McCartney wasted no time.

"We had to physically pull her out. We each grabbed a leg," Swanson said.

"'One, two, three, heave ho' kind of thing," McCartney added.

They pulled out the skier and to his surprise McCartney found out that the skier he had saved was his own wife, Laurie.

"It hit me when I saw her face when we pulled her out," he said.

"They are heroes in my eyes, definitely," Laurie McCartney said. "They knew what to do and they did it."

The American Red Cross recognized the two men along with 11 others at the 2006 Red Cross Heroes Breakfast on Thursday. Each of the men and women helped save lives or made their communities a better place.