Shoring Up Beach Access : Fund-raiser: San Clemente lifeguard, who is paralyzed, leads drive to buy customized wheelchairs that disabled people may use on the sand.

From the passenger seat of a lifeguard Jeep, Scott Stuart dropped to the beach and pulled himself into the crashing gray surf for his ritual morning swim, his paralyzed legs leaving a squiggly trail in the sand.

On other mornings, if the conditions are right, the state lifeguard, who was paralyzed in a diving accident four years ago, hits the waves on his customized surfboard, riding on his stomach as if he’s on a boogie board.

Stuart, 36, a strong athlete and a state lifeguard since 1974, has pushed the limits of his disability to keep the surf and sand a major part of his life.

Now he is turning his energies to making the beach more accessible to others with disabilities, leading a campaign to buy special sand-traction wheelchairs for at least two South County state beaches.

“This will be one more step toward independence for all disabled people,” Stuart said. “It’ll eliminate depending on others to carry them through the sand.”

As a lifeguard, Stuart has dived into the ocean countless times to rescue swimmers. But it was a fateful dive into a shallow pool four years ago in Costa Rica that nearly cost the San Clemente resident his life.

The accident left Stuart a quadriplegic, although he has since regained full mobility of his arms and dexterity of most of his fingers. With the help of a walker, he can also take small steps.

In the long months he spent in a U.S. hospital after the accident, doctors were not sure if Stuart would be able to return to his job, much less surf, hang glide and play the bass guitar again.

But Stuart, with what friends describe as an “unrelenting perseverance, a mulish will and fireball personality,” has achieved more than anyone could have expected.

“I’m just going to keep trying to get better,” Stuart said on a recent morning after a swim in the waters off San Clemente State Beach. “There’s nothing else to do.”

Stuart has been reassigned as a lifeguard dispatcher since his accident and spends his days surveying the sea from a tower on the bluffs overlooking San Clemente State Beach, watching for riptides and dispatching help when he spots a swimmer in trouble.

Not surprisingly, he was named “most improved” and “most inspirational” by his colleagues at the recent end-of-summer lifeguard celebration.

Stuart’s own inspiration comes from Mark Wellman, the paraplegic former park ranger who climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Like Wellman, Stuart takes any chance he can to get out of his wheelchair for recreation, rehabilitation and exercise.

In addition to swimming and surfing, he hang glides, something he had been doing for years before the accident. His glider is equipped with wheels, allowing his friends to literally roll him off cliffs.

“I want to be out of my chair in my glider, on my surfboard,” he said.

He also wants to make the beaches more accessible to people with disabilities, and serves as Orange Coast district coordinator of the Americans with Disabilities Act for the state park service.

Stuart recently started a fund-raising drive for the nonprofit State Lifeguard Assn. to buy sand-traction “Surf Chairs” for Doheny State Beach in Dana Point and San Onofre State Beach, two of the more accessible beaches in South County for disabled people. He started the effort at the request of Laguna Niguel residents Michael Laux and Pat Demar, who uses a wheelchair.

The Surf Chairs, made by a Florida company, would be the first in Orange County. They cost $900 each.

State lifeguards at Doheny, San Clemente and San Onofre beaches receive 10 to 15 requests a week during the summer to help disabled or elderly people through the sand.

The customized wheelchairs, equipped with large dune buggy-type tires that allow people to easily push them through the sand, would also help Stuart. He too depends on lifeguards to drive him across the sand to the waterfront when he wants to swim in the ocean.

“Everyone in a chair wants more freedom and more independence,” Stuart said.

No one knows that better than Laux and Demar, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative condition of the central nervous system.

“She’s always loved the ocean, but she obviously can’t get to it in a regular wheelchair,” Laux said. “Right now she does not go down to the water. It’s kind of humiliating to ask a lifeguard to come down and pick you up. It’s a big scene, not worth the aggravation involved.”

Donations to help buy the customized wheelchairs may be sent to the attention of Scott Stuart at California Aquatic Safety Inc., 3030 Avenida del Presidente, San Clemente, Calif. 92672. For more information, call Stuart at (714) 366-8525.