Water Rescuer Saw Danger and Dived In : Heroism: Mike Grasso clung to a boy and a man being swept away in Pacoima Wash. This time, it had a happy ending.

Haunted by his inability to save a drowning teen-ager three years earlier, Mike Grasso didn’t think twice before risking his life by diving into the swift Pacoima Wash on Tuesday when he saw 7-year-old Jordan Bastasin being swept away.

It was almost his last heroic act.

After drifting three miles in the 40-m.p.h. current, clutching Jordan and an unidentified pedestrian who also was swept away, the lifeguard-turned-police officer made a desperate grab for a concrete abutment.

If he had missed, or failed to hold on, all three could have been crushed in the dank, concrete tunnels.

As it turned out, his grip held. All three miraculously emerged from their ordeal wet, cold and bruised--but alive.

One of the first things Grasso said when he was pulled out was “How’s the boy?”

“There was no way this boy was going to die,” said the 37-year-old Grasso, one of many police officers who had futilely tried to save 14-year-old Adam Bischoff from the flood-swollen Los Angeles River three years ago. Adam was much on his mind during the 40-minute ordeal Tuesday.

“That was all I was thinking about,” he said.

In February, 1992, Adam Bischoff of Woodland Hills was riding his bicycle into the rain-swollen Arroyo Calabasas when he was swept into the Los Angeles River.

Dozens of firefighters, police officers and motorists tried unsuccessfully to respond to his cries for help as he hurtled under bridges through the Valley. Grasso and other LAPD officers went to Balboa Avenue near the Sepulveda Basin to act as a last line of defense.

But they were too late. Adam disappeared beneath the debris-filled water before he reached Grasso.

“He never made it all the way to us,” Grasso recalled Wednesday. “I was just thinking about the same thing (Tuesday night). It doesn’t take long” for a boy to drown.

Tuesday, Grasso had just gotten off work at the Police Academy, where he is a tactical instructor, and was going out for the evening with his half-brother when he spotted two shapes in the Pacoima Wash about 6:30 p.m. The pair followed the shapes for several blocks before Grasso became convinced that two people were being swept away by the raging waters.

Authorities said Jordan was playing near the wash by his home in Sylmar when a friend pushed him in as a prank. The slight youth was swept away in the current, which reached 40 m.p.h.

He hurtled past an unidentified 20-year-old pedestrian who reached over the embankment to try to lift Jordan out but was himself pulled into the wash.

Grasso tried to get into the wash through a park gate, which was locked. They drove to another gate, which Grasso managed to open. Grasso’s half-brother tried to drive the van into the wash, but the current was so strong it began to sweep the vehicle away.

Then Grasso spotted Jordan. “The boy looked like he wasn’t moving,” he said. “I knew if I could get in the water, I had a good half an hour before hypothermia set in. So I dove in.”

Risking his own life, he grabbed Jordan and the 20-year-old--who gasped that he couldn’t swim--and all were swept away.

Though the water was less than hip-deep, Grasso was surprised at how difficult it was to get a foothold on the smooth, concrete channel, which was slick with algae. Although he once worked as a lifeguard and has gone white-water rafting several times, Grasso was unable to hold his own in the roiling water.

“I’ve never done swift-water rescue like that--that was wild,” he said. “Usually, in a river, you can make your way to the side and grab onto something or get your feet in the mud. Here there was nothing.”

After several minutes, the three were swept to the spot where the wash goes under the Simi Valley Freeway. Grasso saw that the channel split in two, going underground through smaller tunnels, and knew that on the other side it spilled into a deep pool with a powerful undertow--the same conditions that sucked Adam Bischoff under.

Holding on to his two charges, Grasso threw himself at a concrete divider that split the channel. It took every ounce of strength he had to keep the youngster and the other man from being swept away in the 20 minutes they waited for help.

Grasso managed to push Jordan on top of the divider while keeping a grip on the man.

“The firemen are coming, they’re going to bring a big truck here,” Grasso calmly told Jordan, trying to keep the boy’s mind off the 50-degree water. “I told him I had a girl that was the same age as he was, and it was going to be OK.”

It was. Dozens of police, firefighters and motorists gathered. A helicopter lifted the three out of the channel. Grasso and Jordan were so weakened by the cold that they could not stand and were rushed to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. They were covered in blankets and released that night with no major injuries. The unidentified 20-year-old man walked away from his ordeal.

Grasso winced on his sore knees as he talked about his experience outside his Chatsworth condominium Wednesday. Doctors told him the soft tissue around his knees was bruised, but he has no regrets about what he did. “It was a good thing to do, because it saved all three of us, but it was a bad thing to do for my knee,” he said.

The 14-year veteran of the force had the day off, but today Grasso will return to his post. A police spokesman said he will probably receive a medal of valor.

“Yesterday was why I joined, and why I’ve stayed,” he said.