Former Laguna Beach Lifeguard Mitch Ridder (with author Craig Lockwood) remembers a particular rescue at Woods Cove Beach and reflects on lifeguards' ability to anticipate danger. Mitch Ridder (left) and Craig Lockwood (right). Recorded at Laguna Beach Library.
Transcript
MR: I was standing down at the water line late in the afternoon watching a lot of the kids play in the water and had a man walk up to me and he said hi and I said hi and he paused and then he asked me do you remember me? and I said no, I don't. And he started telling me a story where a year earlier he had been there at Woods Cove, in the water swimming, and it was a day of yellow flag surf with long lulls, meaning the larger sets of waves would maybe come in every once every 30 minutes every 45 minutes. He and his wife had just to come down on the beach, he happened to come down during one of these lulls, forgot to check the color of the flag on the lifeguard tower, so he assumed it was a nice calm day, so he went out and started swimming. And all of the sudden a large set of waves started rolling in and he was completely caught off-guard, as well as another eight ten other people in the water. He started telling me the story of that day where he literally found himself exhausted to the point that he thought he was going to take one more breath and not be able to hold himself up and was just going to disappear under the water. And it was at that moment that all of the sudden I appeared right in front of him in the water, reached back, handed him my rescue tube , and as he's telling the story his wife has walked up and is standing next to him and she's shaking her head yes , and he finished saying I really thought I was going to die that afternoon at that moment. And he said if you hadn't of been there, I might have very well slipped under the water and not be here today. And for us as lifeguards I think it's fairly universal to say that most of the time when we're making a rescue the person's completely caught off-guard, they're panicked, they're also really embarrassed whether they are there in front of friends or family. And it's not all that unusual to have made a rescue, and often have that person not even say thank you, just because they are embarrassed to the point
CL: Embarrassment
MR: but after the fact, a year later, to have someone come up to me and relay the story, it had only happened once in all those years. As Craig said we were trained to anticipate, so often we would make rescues sometimes even before the person was to the point of being panicked because they didn't even quite realize they were in trouble yet. And there are people like this gentlemen that were on the point of exhaustion and could very well have died. But it's hard for us to say retroactively how many lives we actually saved, because who knows? If we as lifeguard had actually been down the beach rescuing this somebody else and we hadn't got to this one person, would someone else from the beach had rescued them and they would've been fine? Would they have gotten in by themselves alright? So for us to say how many we actually saved, it's really hard to know. But to have this gentleman Come up and say yeah, you probably actually did save my life is one thing that I'll never forget.
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