A ‘Classic’ Bows Out : Illness Forces Legendary Orange County Lifeguard to Hang Up His Swim Trunks

Robust, dirty blond and blue-eyed, Bruce Baird is a legend on Orange County beaches.

“The ultimate water man,” says Newport Beach Chief Lifeguard Ken Jacobsen. “When your kids are in trouble out in the water and the surf is big, you call Bruce.”

Friends know him as the guy with the upper body strength of the Terminator, and legs like a bird.

But this larger-than-life beach habitue, a Paris-trained gourmet chef who has spent nearly 40 years standing guard on county sands, is ill. Fighting leukemia and colon cancer, the 56-year-old Baird, chief guard on Laguna Beach since 1973, has retired.

Baird, who in one day in the early 1950s saved 37 people from the raging surf off the Balboa Peninsula, said his decision to leave was based on the advice of his doctors and his own belief that he is “physically unable to live up to the standards I set for myself.”

Though his retirement became effective July 1, friends and co-workers gathered to honor him last weekend at the Sandpiper Bar, one the guard’s favorite rock ‘n’ roll haunts.

“I’ve hauled enough bodies out of the Santa Ana River and Newport Bay,” Baird said on a recent overcast morning near the landmark white lifeguard station on Laguna’s Main Beach. “I’ve been around death most of my life. I’m not afraid of dying. I think it’s a real waste of time to think about dying.”

Nevertheless, Baird said he was forced to confront his own mortality last Christmas when doctors discovered a malignant tumor on his colon.

“When I found out, I went out and had a martini, and I hadn’t had one in 30 years,” he said laughing.

The tumor was removed in February; since then, Baird said, he has undergone radiation treatment and is continuing chemotherapy at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

Without the treatment, Baird had been given six months to live. Now, doctors are more optimistic and say he may live two to five years.

“It seems to be working. It (treatment) makes me a little ill. But I’ve enjoyed these past six months. I went to Europe with my girlfriend and I can play golf. I can’t sit around and worry about it. I’m just enjoying life.”

Although attention has been focused recently on such on-the-job dangers for lifeguards as skin cancer and diseases caused by water pollutants, Baird said he and his doctors believe his condition is unrelated to his life’s work.

“The leukemia is probably congenital and the colon cancer is just bad luck,” Baird said.

A 1952 graduate of Newport Harbor High, Baird grew up on the beaches of Balboa Peninsula. In high school, he developed a reputation as a strong, competitive swimmer.

After graduation, he attended Claremont College, where he studied business and continued to lifeguard in the summer along Newport Beach. After a stint in the military he went back to the beach and worked as a manager in a number of Southern California restaurants, before taking his wife and baby to Paris in 1960, where he enrolled in cooking school.

He opened his own place--the Little Kitchen--in 1965 and for three years he served up continental cuisine in Dana Point. But business slowly wilted because of construction nearby and he went back to the lifeguard tower for good in 1968.

About 10 years ago, Baird said, he quit counting the number of rescues he had made when the tally hit 1,000.

Out of the sun and water, Jacobsen and others say, Baird’s reputation continues to grow.

“He’s a classic piece of work,” said Chuck Harrell, who with his brother and mother runs the Sandpiper. “He doesn’t let anything bother him, he just cruises. He’s one of the last original nice guys.”

Even now, Baird’s humor comes easily, even though he’d rather not be the subject of an interview.

“Maybe talking like this could help some other people,” he said. “You can cry all you want, but you can’t change anything. You accept it and go on.”