We had one year that was a really bad year.  We had twenty-one body recoveries.  I was on fourteen of them. 

            We had a situation at the Los Angeles River, at the low head damn.

            This has happened more than once.  We have had exactly this scenario happen more than once, in the exact same location!

            These two kids were out there.  The water was low enough that the kids could go out and walk on it.  Because it’s kind of tidal water, brackish water, there’s fresh water that comes down, but then sea water comes up too.  Up on top of the damn there is some growth that makes it really slick. 

            Both children were walking on the top, slippery part, and the water flow pushed them off, into deep water.  Well, they couldn’t swim, so they drowned.

            Below the damn is probably ten feet.  Well, we were able to find one of them fairly quickly.

            This area is really dangerous.  It is a hard dive.  It is full of boulders and crevices, and the water is really nasty and you can’t see very well.  This incident happened late in the day.

            We had found one of the kids.  He was ten or eleven years old.  The two were friends.

            When we started looking for the kids, it was late afternoon.  We were in the water looking, doing our searches. 

            Finally, we suspended our search from that very first day and went back to our staging area.  The father was there.  I was kind of away from it, but he talked to our captain.  He was asking “What’s going to happen now?  I want my son back.” 

            So the next day, early in the morning, we went to do some more searching for him.  That area of the river is like six hundred feet wide.  The banks of the river are really tall.  They handle all the water than comes down.  It’s right in the middle of downtown Long Beach.  And those banks were just lined with people.  It was like working in a stadium.   There were so many people there.  It’s right below a bridge and people were up on the bridge.

            So you’re working in this horrible situation and all these people are watching you.  We got in the water and we started doing our searches.

            I’m not sure how we focus when the situation is like that, other than by just going back to our initial training and doing what we were taught to do.

            Well, we ended up finding him fairly quickly when we got back into the water.  We had a pretty good idea for where he was.  So, uh, I ended up finding him.  We brought him up.  We got him out of the water. 

            (Tearing) I get really emotional about this story.  His father made it very personal.  He said, “When you find him, don’t, don’t wrap him in plastic.”  And he gave us his blanket to wrap him in.  So we did.  And in his blanket, we gave him back to his father.

            You know that that kind of stuff happens.  But nobody should have to go through that.

            This one hits me rather hard.  It was a time where I saw the boy's father.  I talked to the boy's father.  I gave him his son.

            He said thank you.  It was one of the few times that I had someone come and say thank you.  I was a mess after that.  I still am a mess over that one.