One Friday evening last month, a mom was walking her dogs on the beach near Manzanitas, Oregon, when she came across a small shark struggling in a receding tidepool.

The beached salmon shark, which looks like a baby version of a great white, was about three feet (on meter) long and nearly 50 pounds (23 kilograms). Small enough to lug with one hand, but big enough to give a painful bite.

“I was essentially nervous about touching at all,” said Colleen Dunn, in a text message Wednesday while she was back out on the coastline in windy weather.

She watched the shark struggle and writhe as the tide went out, leaving it high, dry, and almost motionless. She couldn't bear to watch it suffer.

After unanswered calls for advice, she decided to carry the shark over the strip of sand separating it from the ocean. Video shows her carrying the shark with one arm, as far as she can keep it from her body, as she springs over the sand, and plops it into the small waves of the shoreline.

Then, she says, the shark regained movement and swim away.