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Keeping People Safe
- Metadata
Title
Keeping People Safe
Series Title
Collection Guide (External)
Created Date
September 9th, 2019
Published Date
November 19th, 2019
Description
Chuck Herpick on his love for the beach and his experiences as a Laguna Beach Lifeguard. Recorded at Dana Point Library.
Transcript
My name is Chuck Herpick. I'm , I grew up in Alhambra in Monterey Park, however, my parents love the beach and they started taking me to the beach when I was , before I can remember, actually. The only thing I really remember was taking naps underneath the umbrella and I could see, still to this day see the colors of that umbrella. So I go way back as far as being a beach person and love for the beach. And so we ended up in Laguna Beach. My parents had a house they rented down there since probably 1940 or 1941, somewhere in that period and we would commute from Monterey Park, down Lakewood Boulevard, hit the circle at Long Beach and head south to Laguna and my brother and I sitting in the back seat of a Model A Ford. It had a rumble seat so we're open to the air. Going by Tin Can Beach through the oil wells of Huntington Beach and down into beautiful Laguna Beach.
Started going to the beach, hanging out in Laguna Beach at the main beach and of course grew up watching the lifeguards on the beach and being taught how to swim and how to surf or body surf and how to handle myself in the water at a very very young age and then , in Laguna in those days we didn't have trials for becoming a lifeguard. They just take us , the kids off the beach who were acclimated to the water and who could swim and who could handle themselves real well in the water and they say hey do you want to be a lifeguard and we'd say sure, because we've been looking up at these guys , they were our heroes all the years of our life and so we'd be looking up to these guys and now we could finally be one. So they pull us off the beach, give us a little training in what they call the artificial respiration which is now CPR in a different version, but they give us a training, we get a pair of swim fins that we'd have to buy ourselves and they give us a lifeguard , pair of lifeguard shorts and that was it and put us in the towers and that's what we did.
This was in the fifties. I lifeguard, by the way, from 1953 through 1957 in the summer times and all vacations and when I'd come home from , I was going to Stanford University at the time and I'd come home and lifeguard on our vacation, so
Up at the main beach sitting on the lifeguard tower, we used to have a deck out in front of that main beach lifeguard tower. They've since taken it down, but right around 5:30 , we quit at 6:00 , right around 5:30 , this was another red flag day , really really dangerous. Big waves. I caught this glimpse of this lady caught out there in the middle of this-these big waves and I grab my fins and went running up the beach and right behind me was Phil Jones. He grabbed his fins and he was behind me and we went in the water, threw on the fins, went out in the water and I grabbed ahold of this lady and a wave hit us and it knocked her loose and we had to hunt for her and we finally got with her again and we pulled her in and we gave her a little bit of artificial respiration like I said we called it. Got a little water out of her , she had taken in some water and she was okay. Well, as I told you, nobody ever thanked us for what we did but the next day in the guard tower, somebody had come by and dropped off two envelopes and in each one of the envelopes was a twenty dollar bill. And so I recog-I didn't know , she just said thank you and said her name, So-and-so. So, about later on that summer, my parents took us up to where Las Brisas is, right now. It was called , ah I forget what it was called, another restaurant , and she was a waitress up there and we're sitting there, having dinner. The next thing I know, there's a bottle of wine set down on our table and it was from her. She just couldn't stop thanking us for this, but anyway, that was a , that was another experience I had.
Nowadays, though, you have to qualify and they , but lifeguarding is the same. You're there, you're on the beach, you're paying attention and you , you're keeping people safe.
Creators and Contributors
Creator:
Orange County Public Libraries
Interviewer: Gilliom, Jon
Editor: Murdy, Chad
Interviewee: Herpick, Charles
Interviewer: Gilliom, Jon
Editor: Murdy, Chad
Interviewee: Herpick, Charles
Subject Topic
Subject Entity
Genre
Spatial Coverage
Temporal Coverage
1940 to 1959
Language
Media Type
Format
mp4
Extent
1
File
Generation
Copy
Color or Black and White
Color
Silent or Sound
Sound
Copyright Statement
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This item may be used for non-commercial and educational purposes. The opinions expressed in OC Stories do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OC Public Libraries or its partners and no official endorsement should be inferred.
Images are courtesy of story tellers and affiliate organizations or used in accordance with fair use and Creative Commons.
Music and sound in accordance with fair use and Creative Commons [ http://creativecommons.org ].
Country of Creation
United States
Contributing Organization
Contributing Organization Contact Information
Email: ocstories@occr.ocgov.com
Phone: 714-566-3055
Phone: 714-566-3055
Organization Websites
Link to Internet Archive
Additional Technical Notes for Item
Original file was named, "OCDS HERC 01.mp4". It was renamed to, corcl_000148_prsv.mp4.