OXNARD : Salesman Revives Man Found in Pool

When he pulled Robert Trivette’s limp body from the pool, Robert Ewing thought he was holding a dead man.

“Then something said: ‘Start pounding on him,’ ” said the 38-year-old Ewing. “Then I gave him mouth to mouth.”

Ewing, a part-time magician and cable television salesman, was selling subscriptions at an Oxnard apartment complex Thursday night when a resident asked him to check on a man who was acting strangely by the pool.

Trivette, a 29-year-old Oxnard native now living in Oklahoma, was visiting a friend at the complex. Under the influence of medication and alcohol, he had wandered out toward the pool, said the friend, who asked not to be identified.

By the time Ewing got to the pool, Trivette was lying motionless at the bottom of the shallow end.

“I looked for bubbles but there weren’t any,” Ewing said. “So I put my head under and pulled him out.”

Trivette was “purple and white and green,” Ewing said. “He didn’t have a pulse.” Ewing started CPR, which he learned as a Marine in Vietnam.

“I was screaming, ‘Don’t die on me!’ ” said Ewing, who was aided by Norm Hunter, a resident of the complex. “I’m scared to death of dead people.”

Another resident called paramedics, who transported Trivette to St. John’s Regional Medical Center. Trivette was in a coma for most of the night, his friend said, but he pulled out of it Friday and was responding to voices.

A hospital spokeswoman said Friday evening that Trivette’s condition had been upgraded from critical to serious.

“Thank God Robert (Ewing) was there,” his friend said, “because I don’t think it would have been another minute and he would have been dead.”

After rescuing Trivette, Ewing said he was worried about making his sales quota at Jones Intercable where he works. He had just returned to his job after a week caring for his father, who is hospitalized for a kidney operation.

“I had only two sales before this all happened,” he said.

“I told him to take the rest of the day off and take care of things, don’t worry about it,” said Dave Ruiz, Ewing’s sales manager. “It’s a good thing that Bob took the initiative. It makes me feel good that he works for me.”