Lifeguarding Is No Longer His Profession But Remains His Pursuit : GUARDING A WAY OF LIFE

Four months ago, Mitch Kahn descended reluctantly from his familiar perch at San Clemente State Beach and entered his critics’ conception of the real world.

He relinquished his status as a full-time lifeguard for the first time in nine years. And though his new position as a sales representative for a sunglasses company certainly doesn’t qualify him as a high-powered corporate executive, it did answer a question that had been causing acquaintances to scratch their heads for some time.

“I’d talk to friends from high school, and they’d say, ‘You’re still a lifeguard?’ ” the 25-year-old Kahn remembers with a bit of remorse. “ ‘When are you gonna get a real job?’ ”

Mitch Kahn has a real job. But he’ll also tell you that is nothing new. Lifeguarding is as genuine an occupation as any other, even if his old high school friends might sneer.

“It is a real job,” he says, sitting in San Clemente at the sand’s edge, where his lean 6-foot 1-inch, 170-pound frame isn’t as common a sight as it once was.

“They think there aren’t any brains up there,” he says, pointing to his head. “A lot of times we get the image of being big, beer-drinking social animals. And it’s not like that at all. That’s a Hollywood stereotype from the Gidget movies. Lifeguarding is a profession. It’s a big responsibility. Lives depend on it.”

And because his happiness is dependent upon the satisfaction lifeguarding brings him, Kahn has not given it up entirely.

Far from it, in fact.

You’ll still find him working at the San Clemente beaches once a week.

You’ll still find him in the major competitions, where lifeguards appear not for money but to sharpen their skills.

You’ll find him this weekend in Chicago, where the national lifeguard championships will be contested, and where Kahn is one of the favorites.

Kahn’s is a sport that is generally not considered a sport. Rarely is it considered at all. The typical fan who can be found at Dodger games and is glued to his easy chair on Sunday afternoons watching pro football usually doesn’t make plans to grab a cooler, head for the beach and watch lifeguards race on surf skis.

Over the years, the plight of the lifeguard has paralleled the plight of the unusual and unrecognized sport in which he competes. Neither seems to get due credit.

So Kahn finds himself defending not only what used to be his full-time job, but also the thing that remains his major concern during non-working hours. He is one of the best lifeguard competitors in the world, having won International Ironman titles in 1982 and 1983.

And yet . . .

“If people ask what event I do, I say I’m a lifeguard ironman,” he says. “They immediately think of triathlon. You have to explain it’s not biking, running and swimming.”

The swimming is there, but that’s where the similarity ends. The International Ironman competition that Kahn is trying to win for the third time consists of a 500-meter swim, a 500-meter board paddle and a 500-meter surf ski rescue in an Australian ocean-going kayak.

And that’s just one of a dozen titles that will be decided in Chicago today and Saturday.

There’s a U.S. Ironman competition, which is different from the international event in that the final leg is a rowing race in a dory, in which the lifeguard must use oars.

There are also 10 individual events:

--a 1,000-meter swim,

--a run-swim-run competition (400 meters of running, 400 meters of swimming and 400 more meters of running),

--a water rescue race,

--a 1,000-meter rescue board race,

--a land line rescue race using a line and rescue can,

--a 1,200-meter surf ski race,

--a dory race,

--a two-mile beach run,

--a beach flag contest similar to musical chairs and

--a dory relay race.

Kahn will compete in both ironman events, the rescue board, the surf ski competition and the dory race.

Chicago means day baseball, wind, punishing winters and the El train. That a city more than a thousand miles from the nearest ocean is playing host to a lifeguard competition seems laughable, especially for someone like Kahn. He could have been born in a bathing suit, and he’s never ventured too far inland, spending his entire life near the ocean, where he feels most comfortable.

“Everyone’s thinking, ‘Why the heck are we having our lifeguard nationals in Chicago?’ ” he says in an incredulous voice. “I was a little bit disappointed. I compete because the surf provides that element of surprise, that feeling that you never know what’s gonna happen.”

But on Lake Michigan, the only element of surprise will be the presence of 400 or so of the nation’s best lifeguards. The surf doesn’t kick up on the lake the way it does in San Clemente.

Kahn remains poised.

“It’ll affect everybody the same,” he says. “I can adjust.”

What Kahn has had difficulty adjusting to is a day-to-day existence that has taken a dramatic shift. Instead of spending his days at the beach, his time is devoted to his family’s business, which sells sunglasses to stores. Whereas he used to patrol the state beaches at San Clemente, San Onofre and Doheny, now his territory is South Orange County and San Diego County, where he travels from surf shop to supermarket to keep old accounts strong and to build new ones, putting to use his degree in business marketing from Cal State Long Beach.

With his so-called “real” existence, there is less time to train for competition than he is accustomed to having. He rises early, goes to bed early, squeezes in his 40-hour-a-week job and his training, and has time for little else.

“When you get up at 6 and you get home at 9, it’s tough to keep a girlfriend on that schedule,” Kahn says. “It was real strange after being a lifeguard for nine years to be plunged into a 9-to-5 job and not be able to see the beach that much. As a lifeguard, you’re looked up to a lot. You’re the mediator at the beach. In a normal job you don’t have that patch on your shorts. You’ve gotta stand on your own.

“When you’re a salesman, people are already looking down on you. How many people get to go around on a beautiful beach in a red, white and blue outfit saving lives and protecting people? You’re like Superman.”

This weekend, he’s an Ironman. Then it’s back to San Clemente, back to business, back to selling sunglasses.

And once a week, back to his old job, his first love, the thing that’s always been second nature to him. A role that has been misunderstood.

Kahn will tell you lifeguarding is the greatest job in the world. He’ll also tell you about some of the things he’s seen at the beach over the years that aren’t so great.

Drownings. Rapes. Drug overdoses. People hit by the train that cruises dangerously close to the sand on its way to Los Angeles or San Diego.

He’ll tell you that being a lifeguard is more than being tan and healthy and picking up girls.

“When it’s happening, everything happens so fast . . . you don’t think about the blood or the screaming. You just react. Then, when it’s all over, you realize what you’ve just done. You realize someone’s life is in your hands. That’s a pretty heavy burden.”

And a real job, if ever there was one.