Rescue Mission : Mexican Volunteers Visit Southland to Learn Lifeguards’ Techniques

From a distance, the five lifeguards could have been stand-ins for a “Baywatch” episode. They had the killer beach tans, the red trunks of California lifeguards, and rad sunglasses.

Nothing unusual about these guys--except that up close, they could be heard speaking Spanish. The word for ocean waves is olas, a subject that Jose Luis Estrada Torres knows much about.

Estrada, 27, is part of a unique exchange program that has brought five volunteer lifeguards--salvavidas--from the Mexican resort of Puerto Escondido, located on the Oaxacan coast about 200 miles southeast of Acapulco, for training with Southern California’s elite lifeguard agencies.

They are spending a week in Huntington Beach, which has adopted Puerto Escondido as its sister city, and another week with lifeguards in Los Angeles County. The Mexican government’s Department of Tourism paid for the lifeguards’ flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles. While in Huntington Beach, they are staying at the homes of local lifeguards. In Los Angeles, they will be put up at lifeguard headquarters.

The program’s goal is to certify Estrada and the other four visitors as international instructors who can, in turn, train and certify a legion of lifeguards, first in Oaxaca and possibly at other Mexican resorts where there are no lifeguard agencies.

“Coming here has been a dream of ours for a long time,” said Estrada, who is captain of Puerto Escondido’s dozen volunteer lifeguards. “This gives us a lot of motivation to see what professional lifeguards do in other countries.”

Estrada’s friend, Daniel Herrera, 26, enjoyed briefings by Huntington Beach lifeguard Matt Karl, a 15-year veteran and one of the agency’s fastest swimmers. Herrera makes his living by owning a discotheque and volunteers as a lifeguard.

“I’m not in that good a shape,” Herrera confided, pointing to Karl. “These guys can swim for miles and they don’t even breathe hard. And, as far as knowing about lifesaving, they have it down to a science.”

Robert Burnside, 65, retired chief of the Los Angeles County lifeguard agency who now lives in Palm Desert, pushed for the exchange after visiting Puerto Escondido eight years ago while on vacation.

“They used to have about 30 to 40 drownings a year there,” Burnside said. “The area is called ‘Mexpipe,’ the equivalent of Hawaii’s Pipeline, but it gets twice as big as Pipeline gets. When I first visited and saw the size of the surf and these guys on paddleboards and surfboards trying to do their best to be lifeguards, it was a sight.”

At that time, Estrada said, they had no equipment. No fins, no portable radios, no lifeguard towers and no Burnside buoys, the red flotation devices lifeguards always keep ready. The buoys were developed by the retired chief.

“We had swim trunks, that’s it,” said Estrada, who with his wife sells swim trunks and surf apparel marketed under the “Mexpipe” name.

Yet, the main beach in Puerto Escondido, Playa Zicatela, is perhaps one of the most treacherous in the world. With thousands of tourists from the United States, Europe and throughout the world, Zicatela’s picturesque sandy beach can disguise its dangers, from a shore break that snaps surfboards like pretzels to an undertow that sucks swimmers sideways and out to sea.

“We can have 10-foot waves crash in about 18 inches of water,” Herrera said. “It’s very shallow there and if you walk out too far our waves can come up and sweep you off your feet and drown you.”

Burnside, under the umbrella of the 8,000-member United States Life Saving Assn., (USLSA) helped Estrada find a group of good swimmers, including Herrera, who were willing to serve as volunteer lifeguards. That was three years ago. Since then, Burnside and Huntington Beach lifeguards, who have an association chapter, have contributed money to send used equipment to Puerto Escondido.

No one has drowned while the lifeguards have been on patrol, which is only about 2 1/2 months of the year, Estrada said.

“That’s why our visit here has been a dream,” Estrada said. “We’re interested in educating the Mexican public about water safety, and how to organize a lifeguard agency so that [the Mexican] government can help support us.”