My First Real Rescue

Last weekend, Amy and I went paddle boarding at Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah. Imagine an oversize surf board that you stand up on. It is supposed to be relaxing and an interesting balance exercise. It was meh.

We rented the boards. It was the last day for rentals and a beautiful, sunny day in the 80s.

There were lots of people at the lake. And no life guards. They were part of long ago budget cuts. The park is lovely and very well used in the summer months and really all year long. Nicole and I swam a leg of the triathlon there.

Well on the return trip I saw a kid drowning and I rescued him. Thirty years or so since I was an official life guard in our little town. In all that time, this is the second time I ever saw anyone pulled from the water who seriously might have drown. Most of the time, if you rescued someone, it was a baby/toddler whose mom turned her back. No harm, no neglect, just a little distraction and the kid falls over. So you pick him or her up. The only real rescue I saw was by Brian Scannell, who rescued a young lady while I watched.

On both occasions, and you read about this and it is hard to comprehend, the drowning people do not struggle, do not thrash, do not yell for help. They look like they are trying to swim or tread water and they just go under. When I pulled the kid onto the paddle board, he took 10 seconds to catch his breath. He asked me if he could stand up and I said no. Then he let go and tried to swim to shore again approximately 10 more yards to safety.

He went under in what I would describe as earnest vertical dog paddle. His feet sank and then he went under. So I grabbed his wrist and pulled him up again. Cough, cough. I told him to hold on and paddled a bit closer. By now, his friends had came out to him; we were maybe 10 feet from where he could stand, and he let go and tried again, only tobegin to fail again. His friend said, “grab my neck,” and I thought uh oh. But they managed the 10 feet.

In fact, by reaching for the neck and just changing his balance in the water an elongating his vessel and relaxing, he started to float in what Total Immersion calls superman glide. He was easily towed the last few feet, stood up, ran to the shore as if nothing had happened.

The weird part, and I’ve read stories like this in the paper before, the kid would have drown in a sea of people. No one was noticing it. Why? Because it is silent and looks similar to a lot of bad swimming. The kid was in complete denial himself that he was drowning. But it was clear to me, that he was out of gas and I could see him trying and sinking. He wasn’t panicking, he was trying to swim and failing.

When you go snorkeling, the leader tells you that the signal to say your ok is to touch your hands to your head. I get it now. You can’t do that if you are in distress. You will either sink trying, or you will not be willing to let your hand stop doing what they are doing, desperately trying to keep you afloat. That is all the indication a trained person needs to see you are in trouble from a distance away.

After the incident, a lady walked up to me as we returned the boards. She asked, “was he ok?” I wasn’t sure what to say because I had no idea if she was a curious bystander, his mom, or what. She was calm though. So I said, “he said he was but no. He was in distress.” She said, “Well thanks. I’m responsible for them. He probably just bit off too much and is embarrassed. They all walked out the sand bar and then decided to swim back. Thanks so much.”

I looked down at her leg in a cast and her crutches and said, “yeah, that’s exactly what happened.”

I thought, “ya know there is no life guard right? the ‘responsible person’ should not be prevented from going in the water by, ya know, a cast and crutches. Or maybe should not let the kids do something that risky.”

I said, “yah, sure. I was right there.”

And really that’s all it was. I was nearby and I saw the signs and just reacted. He might have made it.

This kid was the runt in a group of 10, 11, and 12 year olds. He just wasn’t really capable of doing this. Had he had lessons, he might have known to roll on his back and stop struggling. Or do the side stroke or breast stroke. It was a perfect example of failing to understand that fighting the water is not the solution.

I knew exactly what had happened. We had paddled by these kids or kids just like them and something in my brain said, hmmmmm. It is exactly the kind of thing we would have yelled at kids to not do back in Oxford. When I saw the kids at the sandbar I thought, “I bet kids try to swim back from here.”

I was really glad to think that we taught our kids to swim. They had so many lessons and are so water savvy. But you can just over-estimate your ability. I was also glad I took swimming lessons (thanks Mom) and became a life guard. Boy was that a great summer job. Even at Carbuncle Pond, the puddle.