With all of our might.  With all of her might.
La Jolla Rescue (circa 1977)

By Paul Newman

The ocean water felt refreshingly cool but warm enough not to need a wetsuit as I paddled out into the small waves at La Jolla Shores that clear summer morning. The bright sun had lifted above Mount Soledad and flooded the beach with a warm glow. Fellow San Diego City lifeguard Gary Crabtree had just taken the first watch in the main lifeguard station at La Jolla Shores.  Given the light crowd – mostly surfers – I decided to get some exercise paddling one of our yellow rescue paddleboards.

I hadn’t been in the water more than ten minutes when I heard a whoop of the siren from the lifeguard truck.  I spun around and saw Gary in the truck racing up to water’s edge.

“Ten-nineteen, Paul. Code three! Code three!” Gary said over the loudspeaker.

That meant return to the station, right now!  He didn’t say anything more so as not to alert the beach patrons, but as I tossed the board on the roof rack and jumped into the cab he told me:

“Got a drowning at the Beach and Tennis Club!”

With siren blaring we raced a few hundred yards south to the where La Jolla Shores met the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.  It was a private club with its own lifeguards. As we pulled up one young lifeguard was laboring in through the surf with an elderly person who was completely collapsed.  Gary and I raced into the waist deep water and helped him get the person to shore.

It was a woman in her 80s, completely unresponsive.

We got her to dry sand and started CPR.  Gary gave the breaths as I started heart compressions.  This was my first real CPR case in three years of lifeguarding.

As soon as Gary blew into her mouth she forcefully blew vomit back in his face. I almost choked.  I don’t know how Gary continued, but he did.  We did CPR for a minute or so when I looked up and saw two Beach and Tennis Club lifeguards dragging a second person out of the water.

They brought a man in his 80s next to us and Gary started CPR on him. When he blew into the man’s mouth, however, only a passive dribble of liquid oozed out. I guessed he was already dead, but the beach club lifeguards, Gary and I kept working on both victims.

About this time I heard sirens as other city lifeguards appeared in vehicles on the beach. They were there very quickly.  Joe Barnett, a seasoned guard and veteran of many CPR cases ran up and slipped a CPR tempo-beeper onto the waistband of my board shorts.  This beeped in proper tempo for CPR so I could pace myself without letting my adrenalin take over.  Someone else brought an oxygen bottle and took over the pulmonary inflations.

Shortly after that a couple of ambulances showed up.  The paramedics spent a brief time on the sand hooking up oxygen, IVs and whatever else they needed, then put the patients on gurneys and half lifted, half pushed them over the sand to the ambulances. One of the paramedics slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Get in!”

I jumped into the back of the ambulance with the woman I’d been working on and we sped off to the hospital, sirens on full wail.

At the hospital we rushed into the emergency room and into an open bay.  The staff began cutting the woman’s one piece bathing suit off and applying the defribulator pads. Feeling a bit useless and cold, naked except for my wet board shorts, I stood off to the side and let them work.  I was fascinated at the efficiency and detachment with which the nurses and doctors worked.  There was no privacy or modesty left for the victim, but there was a one hundred percent effort to save a human life.

I looked at her being worked on and marveled at the medical profession yet was struck by the fleeting nature of this life.  I remember thinking that regardless of who we are and what we do, on some level we are each, in the end, an organism that eventually dies, sometimes in an unflattering way.

But this woman lived.  She spent some time in the intensive care ward but she lived.  Her husband, unfortunately, did not. Apparently what had happened was that the couple was out for their morning swim when the man had a heart attack.  His wife tried to support him but was unable to keep them both above water. The beach club lifeguards saw it and went to the rescue, calling the city lifeguards at the same time.

She had tried valiantly to save her husband’s life that morning.  Likewise, all the responders and hospital staff saved her life that day.