Dark Side of the Sun : Risk of Cancer Dims Glamour for Lifeguards

It’s strange to think now, Mike O’Hare recalls, that in more than 20 years of guarding San Diego’s city beaches, he forgot to guard himself.

Like scores of other veteran lifeguards, the 44-year-old had made a career playing the glamorous beach life style to the hilt--spending long summers perched on his elevated chair, using baby oil to enhance a golden tan that was to become the very image of California itself.

But, in all those years, when no one on the beach was looking, the sun’s rays quietly took their toll. Today, a number of veteran guards who never thought to wear a hat or shirt--much less rub in a little sun block--are suffering the initial forms of skin cancer.

One 39-year-old La Jolla Shores guard was recently told by his doctor that he would eventually contract full-blown skin cancer--even if he spent the rest of his years in a darkened closet.

Others have opted for eye operations to remove bothersome callouses formed from years of squinting into a glaring sun.

And last year, a former San Diego city lifeguard died of skin cancer that lifeguard supervisors speculate could be the result of his years on the staff.

After removing cancerous cells from O’Hare’s right temple, his doctor recently suggested that he find another line of work--something in an air-conditioned office, perhaps.

“All these years, without our even knowing it, the sun was wiping us out,” said O’Hare, who has been forced to work a night shift and must undergo checkups every three months because of his skin condition.

“There are lots of reasons guards retire, including bad backs, but this skin cancer thing has opened a new can of worms. To me it was a signal. When it comes to the point of having to hide from the sun, it’s time to go out and get a regular job.”

Retirement in Question

Today, O’Hare has hired a lawyer to help sort out his dispute with the city over his status in light of his condition--whether he should retire with full benefits or continue working nighttime hours or even a desk job.

Many of his veteran colleagues are anxiously awaiting the results of the precedent-setting case.

“Clearly, the incidence of skin cancer among lifeguards is increasing despite efforts we’ve made over recent years, including providing free sun block and other equipment regulations,” said Chris Brewster, captain of the city’s lifeguard service.

“I think it has serious long-range implications for the city’s retirement system, not just for lifeguards but all city employees who work in the sun.”

Mounting health problems aren’t the only changes being faced these days by San Diego’s 70 full-time lifeguards.

Up and down the beaches, the turbulent autumn tides are a signal of the changes coming to San Diego’s sandy summer playground.

Soon, about 200 seasonal lifeguards will join the tourists and sun-tanned locals in their annual exodus from the beach, leaving a cadre of full-time veterans to hash out the boredom of the long winter, with occasional stormy weather to keep them alert.

“You have to have something to occupy your brain up there,” said veteran Ron Trenton, motioning to the stately, glass-enclosed guard tower at La Jolla Shores. “Because we do have a lot of time on our hands.

“In a way, you’re sentenced to that tower eight hours a day. But I do a lot of reading in the winter. I have no problem thinking about things, making plans for the future.”

For some guards, the winter could become darker than usual.

Looking for ways to make up a $140,000 budget deficit, supervisors may soon lay off several full-time lifeguards.

For veteran lifeguards, the proposed cutbacks pose

a nagging question: How have these men and women, some in their late 30s and 40s, made a career out of a job many people consider to be little more than a summer fling?

Several full-time guards said in interviews that they weighed their love for the beach--and the attractive lifeguard image--against steady pressures from family and from themselves to get “legitimate work.”

“I have a lot of lifeguard friends who have broken down and gotten themselves a 9-to-5 job,” O’Hare said. “Some say they made the right decision. But others can’t believe they ever quit. They said their lifeguarding years were the best years of their life.”

Public Stigma for Guards

One problem for lifeguards, O’Hare said, is the public stigma attached to their work--often from tourists whose image of a lifeguard is the teen-ager hanging out by the public pool.

“The first thing people think is that we’re out there just for fun, that we have absolutely no ambition, and are just lazing through life,” he said.

Two questions O’Hare and other guards hear time and again are, “What happens when the summer’s over?” and “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

“People don’t understand the life-saving expertise required for the job, that it’s a year-round commitment, not to mention the fact that I love going to work. With what other job could you get up everyday and say to yourself, ‘Yeah, I’m going to work!’ ”

Statistics show, however, that up to 20% of the full-time lifeguard staff leaves each year--many for jobs with the Fire Department, attracted by the higher pay and management opportunities.

“The exodus is of extraordinary concern to us because we need to replace quality veterans with people of equal vigor and quality,” Brewster said. “You can’t just replace a veteran guard with some new guy who’s attended his share of life-saving classes.

“You need those guys who have done it all before. It’s impossible to duplicate in the classroom the quality of the challenge in the field.”

Reasons for Leaving

Barry Gamboa is one of those who left a career in the sun. Five years ago, after attending college part time to earn a master’s degree in finance, he hung up his binoculars to take a job as a stock broker.

By the time the market crash hit last year, the stress of the job had given Gamboa an ulcer and had begun causing his hair to fall out, he said.

And so, last year, he came back to the South Mission Beach lifeguard tower where he had spent so many satisfying years.

Today, the 34-year-old works as a division analyst for the lifeguard service and teaches an investment course at a local community college.

So much, he says, for the pressure to leave lifeguarding for a real job.

“One reason I left is that I couldn’t see myself running around the beach in a bathing suit at age 44,” he said. “There’s so few management positions here, that’s why so many guys go to the Fire Department, where they have room for 200 or 300 upper-level people.”

Graduate school gave Gamboa more doubts about pursuing a career on the beach.

“The nightmare is being stuck in the sand, running around with guys in better shape than you, guys who are young enough to be your sons,” he said. “When you dive into 50-degree waters to make some rescue, you ask yourself ‘Boy, is this all there is to life?’ ”

Another reason for restlessness among lifeguards, O’Hare said, is the amount of time they are forced to take from work because of health concerns.

A city study conducted a few years ago found, for example, that lifeguards took twice as many days off from work as firefighters because of work-related injuries and four times as many days as police officers, he said.

Skin cancer complications was one condition keeping lifeguards at home, according to city health records.

35 Claims Filed

In the past five years, there have been 35 lifeguard health claims filed with the city involving skin cancer and related conditions, according to Pat Brogan, a worker’s compensation adjuster for the city’s risk management department.

Most of the claims were filed by the full-time guards, he said, which include half-a-dozen members with 20 or more years of experience. Eight full-timers are 40 or older, and two are women.

Mike O’Hare was one of those filing a city claim.

Last October, O’Hare noticed a discoloration on his right temple. It was later diagnosed as actinickeratosis, a skin lesion that is often a precursor to more serious forms of skin cancer.

Although O’Hare had the cancer cells removed, he’s still not breathing easy. “I have to keep going back for checks because the cancer sends out roots like a tree. If they hit the bloodstream, the stuff spreads. Then you’re in real trouble.”

Now O’Hare finds himself caught up in city red tape, unsure of his future as a lifeguard. Initially told he would retire with benefits last Friday, he has been placed in limbo again while the city reviews his case.

“The risk management people can’t decide if I really have cancer, and, even so, the retirement people can’t decide if it’s grounds for retirement with full benefits,” he said.

“In the meantime, I have my life to plan, and they’re not giving me any notice of what they’re going to do.”

Worried About Precedents

Lawrence Grissom, the city’s retirement administrator, said officials were trying to establish whether O’Hare’s skin condition was work-related.

“This is a precedent-setting case because there are others just like it waiting to be filed,” he said. “The way we look at it, if a man with a family history of heart problems dies on the job, does that make his boss responsible?”

Lifeguard Captain Brewster said the skin cancer cases aren’t confined to the veteran lifeguards.

“We have some fair-skinned lifeguards with two or three years’ experience who are beginning to show skin problems,” he said. “It seems to involve more than just exposure to the sun, but also your predisposition to getting cancer.”

In recent years, officials have required that shirts, hats and sun block be worn on the job, and have encouraged frequent health testing.

With the spate of recent skin problems, however, supervisors have considered going one step further.

“We’ve thought seriously about screening out job applicants we find to have a predisposition to skin cancer, tell them flat out that this isn’t the right job for you,” he said.

Skin Lesions on Forehead

Lifeguard Ron Trenton already had his minor scrape with skin lesions he found on his forehead. But that, he says, isn’t going to stop him from having the time of his life at the beach, playing a role that has become key to his identity.

At 44, he’s only two years younger than the oldest guard on the staff. But his enthusiasm for the job rivals that of the youngest upstarts.

Sure, those flecks of gray in his hair weren’t there when he started guarding back in 1966. But the wiry California native, an English major in college who mixes bursts of macho bluster with quotes from Milton, talks about his job as if it were one of the young women he has met on the beach.

It’s just that, after all these years, the Mission Bay native still thrives on the adrenaline he gets from saving people’s lives.

He likes being on the beach. So he has stuck around.

His parents dropped their jaws in the early ‘70s when he told them he was going to make a career out of being a lifeguard. Now they’re proud that he stuck with it.

Anyway, the $650-a-week salary keeps him alive, he says. And, with his real estate investments, he’s making enough to one day buy some land in Oregon for his retirement.

Meanwhile, Trenton keeps in shape. He does push-ups. He swims. He rides his bike 20 miles every day. Those younger guys might have a step on him, but no more than that. He’s heard all that talk about how the body starts to fall apart at 42. Well, Ron Trenton’s still waiting.

“I want to stay what I am,” he said. “I became a lifeguard for the action. I wouldn’t want to become a supervisor and have to do paper work in some air-conditioned office.

“If I’m not out here every day, something’s missing.”

Over beers, many of his colleagues have talked about how the job has changed since they started as starry-eyed kids a generation ago.

“There’s just more people at the beach,” O’Hare said. “And the liability’s changed. It used to be, you could let people pretty much do what they wanted and then go pull ‘em out if they got in trouble.

“Today we have to control people, lead them around like sheep, tell them they can’t swim there without fins, or they can’t walk here, period. It’s like being a cop. It’s different and it’s worse.”

For single guys like Trenton, though, the lifeguard’s job provides introduction to a steady stream of young, eligible women, most of whom have nothing to hide in a bikini.

Guards like Trenton and O’Hare wouldn’t dream of dating a woman their own age--most of their girlfriends are at least 20 years younger.

Trenton laughs at the thought of his recent 20-year high school reunion, where the 18-year-old girlfriend on his arm was younger than the daughters of some of his classmates.

But Trenton acknowledges that there’s a down side to the fast life on the beach.

“A woman will break up with you for the same reason she falls in love with you,” he said. “Some girls fall in love with the life style. They like the fact that you ride your bike to work every day, that you don’t worry about quotas or have to go on call like some doctor.

“Suddenly, two years later it’s not enough. They want more, that house on the hill or whatever. I tell them, ‘Baby, that’s all there is.’ Because I’m happy with myself.

“It’s like that line from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ The mind is a place unto itself. It can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven.”

Drawbacks of a Lifer

And that’s not all. There’s another drawback to being a lifer. In the winter, when the kids--the seasonal guards--are all back in college, he’s the one who has to stock the first-aid kits, do the sweeping, scrub the toilet and showers--when no one’s looking, of course.

“Cleaning the mold off the shower room walls is something you do and not tell your friends about,” he said. “Sometimes I say, ‘Here I am with 23 years’ experience, and I’m scrubbing toilets.’ But somebody’s got to do it.”

Twenty years ago, Trenton was a mere kid when he rented a little bungalow in La Jolla and wrote what he thought would be the “Great American Novel.” It was a book about the lifeguard life--an autobiography, really, and it was filled with high drama, exciting episodes of rescuing drowning people.

The book was never published. He sent the manuscript to Hollywood in 1973. A year later, the movie “Lifeguard” starring Sam Elliott was released. Although there are differences between the two, Trenton still wonders if the movie is really his book in disguise.

“In the book, there are several characters who have second thoughts about lifeguarding and go off to do other things--become a paramedic or go to law school,” he said.

“It’s pretty sad at the end. The main character is left alone. They leave him to get old, like rats jumping from a sinking ship.”