ONAWA, Iowa -- Darrin Toney left for Boy Scout camp last weekend a strapping 16-year-old with designs on winning a starting position for the Carroll (Iowa) Tigers in football this fall.

He wanted to find the fellow Boy Scout he credits with saving his life.

"I think I know who he is," said Toney, one of at least 60 injured early Wednesday evening when a tornado ripped through Little Sioux Scout Ranch on the Harrison/Monona County line.

Toney said he and 28 other Boy Scouts were doing outdoor projects at the camp when a troop leader spotted rotations in the clouds above. He advised the Scouts to take shelter in a building that contained little, save for cots and a stone chimney.

"We were all inside and he [the leader] was in the doorway looking outside when he told us all to get down," said Toney. "Then he got sucked right outside."

The leader survived, Toney said. Four others did not.

Toney crouched on the floor of the shelter as the twister ripped the building apart. He remembered being knocked flat on his back before the force of air lifted his body and began tossing it around.

He wailed in the fury, "Somebody help me! Somebody help me! I am going to die!"

That's when a hand grabbed his arm and held on. Toney looked at his fellow Scout, who he said told him, "Hold on! We're going to make it!"

In a minute, he figured, it was done. Boys and staff members emerged from the shelter, which had been reduced to a pile of debris. Had his fellow Boy Scout not taken his arm, Toney fears he could have been thrown into a swirling pile of stone from the chimney.

He called his parents as he awaited transport to the hospital. He asked his mom to keep calm as he told her he'd been in a tornado, and hurt his leg. His right ankle was fractured; his ACL damaged.

But he had also survived.

His dad, Mark, a trooper with the Iowa State Patrol, hopped in the family's truck with wife Mary and their youngest son, Adam, 12. They headed west from Carroll into the teeth of the storm system that nearly killed their son.

"We just kept dodging funnels and tornadoes the whole way there," Mary said. "We had to stop at a farmhouse once because of another tornado that was near Defiance, Iowa. We had just passed Defiance."

They reunited at the hospital where about 60 victims of the tornado were seen by medical staff. They hugged. Darrin then shared his story and asked the typical things that bother a 16-year-old boy.

"How did the Celtics do?" he asked, noting he'd gone days without TV at the camp.

Shortly before midnight, Mark pushed his son's wheelchair out the front door and readied for a much quieter drive home. Mary kissed Darrin atop the head and told him how lucky she felt.

"All you want to do is see your son," she said of the drive they made three hours earlier. "I can't help but think of those four mothers who won't and what they're going through.

"We are very, very lucky," she added.

As they turned the wheelchair for Darrin toward the truck, Mary welcomed her son to an exclusive club. She survived a deadly twister as a child in 1974. She was 7 when her father rushed inside and ordered her and her brothers to the basement. Their home was destroyed.

It's all a bad memory now. She sighed and touched her son gently on his left arm.

"Welcome to the brotherhood of tornado survivors," she said.