If Noah Sloan has a second home, it just may be what he sees and experiences under the waters of East Tennessee and in the many other places he’s explored around the world.

Born in Los Angeles and reared in tiny Julian, CA, in San Diego County, Sloan, 37, is today part of the Knox County Rescue (KCR) dive team, a team he joined three years ago after moving to Knoxville in 2022.  Based on his community service work, co-owning a dive company that helps many who have lost loved ones and personal items, and his time in the U.S. Navy serving our country, Sloan is honored as this week’s Our Town Hero.

Not long after graduating from Julian High School in 2007, he joined the Navy and completed basic training (boot camp) at Great Lakes, IL, the Navy’s Recruit Training Command facility. His nine-year Navy career had begun. His naval career included more diving and attaining a set of medical skills he utilized during two tours in Afghanistan as part of the 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines India Co. His first tour was a year, the second for six months.

He had nine years of Naval emergency medical experience, practicing pre-hospital medicine for forward-deployed Marines, plus four years of cardiac medicine training specializing in the cardiac specialty of electrophysiology.

Like many veterans who experienced the trauma of war, Sloan declines to say much about it. He did offer this: “Afghanistan was like the wild west. Constant firefights and engagements. It was every bit a war. On average, we had two or three Marines killed daily,” he said. His job as a Naval Hospital Corpsman meant that he cared for the wounded Marines as well as the wounded Afghan prisoners.

We asked if he had any close calls or had ever been injured in Afghanistan. “I don’t talk about any of that.”  He says he still has an issue with Tinnitus from his days in Afghanistan.

But today, diving is both his business and love. It began with a mentor he met while in high school. He says this man had been an explosive ordnance technician in the Navy. “He got me interested in the underwater world, and it excited my interest,” Sloan says.

He started diving when he was 19, and once in the Navy, he spent 13 weeks at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center (NDSTC) at the Naval Support Activity Center in Panama City, FL. This is the largest diving training facility in the world. He learned scuba diving and surface-supply diving using hoses and rebreathers, without bubbles.

Sloan has been diving in most anyplace you can imagine – lakes, rivers, oceans, quarries, freshwater springs in Florida, and caverns. “It’s a different world down there, under the water. It’s peaceful.”

His move to East Tennessee led to a group of divers deciding to create a company to help families in times of crisis. The company is known as “Need-a-Diver,” and the divers help find and recover people who have disappeared underwater. His business partners are Kedrick McKenzie and Jason Hopkins.

“We proudly offer our search and recovery efforts involving missing loved ones at no cost to families,” Sloan explains. “We work mostly in the lakes around here. You can’t put a price on a human life or on recovering their remains. Last year we had 10 body recoveries.” Those 10 were included in the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) report; there were 26 boating-related deaths in Tennessee that required recoveries.

One victim – David Molina, 25 – was recovered 81 feet down in Douglas Lake in 2025.

They do, however, bill clients for finding an array of personal items lost overboard and underwater. They are paid to find things like sunglasses, jewelry, bracelets, necklaces, rings, wallets, cell phones, and most anything within reason. Most of his diving is done at Norris Lake, too. If you need their help, you can connect with a “Need-a-Diver” on social media – Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

His volunteer community work with the Knox Rescue Squad recently led him to the Tennessee River under the South Knoxville Bridge. A man had driven his car into the river, and Sloan and another KCR diver were there first. “His car was about three feet below the surface, and there was no visibility at all. We found him in less than an hour and had to pull him out, and we got him to the boat launch,” he said. The man was taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center and did not survive.

Here are some other tidbits he shared about his diving life:

  • During a recent trip to Florida he saw his first-ever baby freshwater eel.
  • His favorite place to dive is Ginnie Springs, a privately owned park in Gilchrist County, some six miles northwest of High Springs, FL, on the south side of the Santa Fe River, to which it is connected.
  • Things startle him at times. “The light and water create magnification and things like lawn furniture look huge down there.”
  • “I was diving in central Florida and saw a school of at least 300 baby catfish, each about the size of my hand. The light beams made them all look like sharks. It got my attention.”
  • He says he is “petrified of snakes” and so far has never had an encounter with one while diving.

So exactly how did this multi-talented California guy end up in East Tennessee? After his military career, he traveled the country and worked here and there. During that time, his sister found and fell in love with a farm and moved to Clinton. She homeschools three children now. Sloan came for a visit and found his new home. “I loved it then and still do,” he says.

Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California, and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email Tom at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.

Aubrey’s Restaurants sponsors Our Town Hero. 

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