‘It was a little dramatic because it was close : to the rocks and the surf was up.’--Sam Taylor : Superman? No; Plucky Lifeguard? Yes

Sam Taylor was at home, just tying his high-tops and getting ready to head for his parents’ place in Laguna Beach for Sunday night dinner, when the beeper he wears as an on-call lifeguard went off with a screech.

Taylor, 26, immediately called the lifeguards’ emergency phone number. He was told only that a powerboat with three people aboard was in danger of being dashed onto jagged Rockledge beach.

“Do you want the Harbor Patrol?” the dispatcher asked. “Yes,” Taylor replied. “If what you tell me’s true, get ‘em down there.”

“I thought by the time I got there all I’d be doing was picking people out of the water,” he said later in a telephone interview.

Bouncing in the surf in a 21-foot powerboat were three people whose Sunday outing seemed about to end in disaster. There were Joan Kuder, 36, an Anaheim housewife, her husband, Richard, 36, and a friend, Joao Verde, 27, of Upland. The three had been returning from Santa Catalina Island, bound for Newport Harbor. Instead, they ended up to the south, closer to Dana Point, Joan Kuder said.

By the time the sailors got their bearings, they were four miles from Laguna Beach.

“All of a sudden the engine died out, and unfortunately we were parallel to the jagged rocks,” she said. “The wind was strong and the waves were five-foot swells.”

As Taylor raced to the scene, the dispatcher radioed the Laguna Beach lifeguard with more information: One passenger had jumped overboard.

Richard Kuder had donned a wet suit to swim to shore for aid. Kuder reached shore safely but Taylor had already arrived at the boat, paddling out on a surfboard.

“We saw this guy come up from the left-hand side of the boat, and he said, ‘What’s wrong,’ ” Joan Kuder said. “I thought he was a surfer, but he was too nice to be a surfer. He told us what he was going to do, then he tied one of his floaters to the boat and put the other around his waist. By doing the freestyle (stroke), he pulled us to safety.

“That’s what was really amazing. He pulled us in through the waves and in through the wind” to the open sea. Taylor was able to pull the boat out of danger until the Harbor Patrol arrived to tow it to safety.

If Taylor hadn’t appeared, Kuder said, “we would have had to abandon ship, and we had our dog Schlamper with us, and I was worried about what would happen to her. . . . Everyone is OK and happy, just embarrassed about the situation.”

Taylor, a Cal State Fullerton communications major with 10 seasons of experience as a lifeguard, was quick to discount the incident.

“I’ve had rescues where I’ve towed boats before, climbed into the water and done exactly the same thing,” he said Monday. “It was a little dramatic because it was close to the rocks and the surf was up. We’ve all towed boats before; we’ve just never got the recognition for it before.”

Which might not be a bad thing. As word of his valor spread, Taylor said, he had to endure “heavy, heavy truckloads and shovelfuls” of, uh, abuse, from his fellow lifeguards.

And it didn’t help matters much that one witness to the incident likened him to Superman and famed muscle man Jack LaLanne as he dragged the troubled craft to safety.

On Monday, a television reporter asked Taylor how apt the Superman description was. “I said, ‘Come on.’ I think he (the witness) was describing my quick change into a wet suit, not my physique.”

And besides, Superman is passe. Taylor would rather have been likened to the late kung fu superstar Bruce Lee, say, or “Make My Day” Clint Eastwood.