JUNEAU, Alaska -- A 6-year-old girl and her father helped save an 83-year-old man who fell off his boat at Juneau's Aurora Harbor.

Erin Cole was walking on the docks Sunday with her father, Richard Cole, and 2-year-old brother.

"We were just kind of looking at boats," said Richard Cole. "We had been walking for quite a while, and I'd actually asked the kids if they wanted to turn back, and Erin said she wanted to go down one more finger."

Cole said he stopped to look at a boat as his daughter continued walking, then called for him. "She called out, 'Daddy!' and seemed upset," Richard Cole said. "And I didn't have any idea of what was going on. I ... kept moving toward her, and that's when I was able to hear somebody calling out."

The sound was faint, but as Cole approached Erin, his daughter pointed to a man almost submerged.

"He'd fallen in and it looked like he tried to catch himself on the boat," Cole said. "He actually had his feet on the dock, but the rest of him was in the water."

The man was unable to pull himself up and trying to hold his head out of the water by hanging on to a rope with one hand and reaching for help with the other.

As Erin Cole held on to her brother, Richard Cole helped the man onto the dock and gave him his sweat shirt.

"He couldn't even really sit up without help," Cole said. "He couldn't stand. He was shivering uncontrollably. He didn't seem to any idea how long he'd been in the water."

"No one was really in that area except for the father and his two children," Brown said. "It was a cold day, and he was lucky that guy and his children were there."

Cole said he was proud of his daughter. "When I explained to her that he might not have been able to get out of the water if she hadn't seen him, she was pretty proud of herself," he said. "I'm just glad that he was OK, and I'm very proud of my daughter."