Mystery Rescuer: Good Samaritan or Angel of Mercy?

She wrote the letter to the newspaper, a grandmother wanting to say “thank you” to a mystery man she’ll probably never meet.

“To a Hero,” the letter began.

“This is an open letter of gratitude to the man who saved the life of our granddaughter, Natalie, on Sunday, July 28, near the San Clemente pier . . . “

Dwell for a moment on those words: “ . . . to the man who saved the life of our granddaughter . . . “

Patricia Finchamp of Huntington Beach wrote the letter on behalf of herself and her husband, Blake. I gave them a call last week and Mrs. Finchamp was only too happy to recount the incident, as told to her by Natalie and her mother, who is Mrs. Finchamp’s daughter.

“Natalie and her friend Brooke went to the beach last Sunday to watch the guys surfing,” Mrs. Finchamp said. After a while, the girls moved to another location and Natalie, who turned 15 in May, went out into the ocean.

“Natalie said she looked at Brooke, who said, ‘Here comes a wave, duck under.’ She did, but when she came up, it had pulled her out to sea, so to speak. I asked her if she had the feeling she had been underwater for a long time, because I’ve been turned around underwater, and she said she did. She said she felt like she’d been out there for a long time. She said when she came up, she realized she was alone.”

Natalie said she never panicked. She tried to swim, but another wave took her under again. She told her grandmother the waves seemed to keep coming and that she was amazed at how big they seemed to be, one after another.

She remembers seeing body boarders but didn’t think they’d hear her if she yelled. Besides, she kept thinking she could make it in. “I just kept trying but I was getting awfully tired,” she told her grandmother. “I just wondered if I shouldn’t give up.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Finchamp said, Brooke was on the shore, calling, “Natalie, Natalie, where are you!” Brooke said later she could see the top of Natalie’s head but that her friend was too far out in the water to see if you weren’t looking for her.

Then, the man came up. The girls later would say he appeared to be about 25. He asked Brooke if Natalie was in trouble, but Brooke said she thought she’d be OK. He asked a second time, Brooke reassured him again, but he said, “I think I’m going to go get her.”

Although Natalie insists she was never fearful, her grandmother thinks her recollections suggest the ocean was overpowering her. Mrs. Finchamp said Natalie told her: “I don’t even remember being taken back to shore. I remember he took my arm, and then all of a sudden I was there on the beach. I laid down, out of breath. I sat there and turned around to thank him, and, Grandma, he absolutely disappeared.”

Mrs. Finchamp thinks Natalie was clearly disoriented and in peril by the fight with the waves. “If it weren’t for that young man, we wouldn’t have her today. . . . Nobody else was around her and if it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have drowned.

“My daughter thinks this man is her guardian angel. My mother recently died and her name was Marie, and this young lady’s name is Natalie Marie--she was named after her--and my daughter thinks this man was Grandma somehow being a guardian angel and coming along and taking care of Natalie. It’s the fact that he came out of nowhere, the kids can’t describe him, and he disappeared so quickly.”

Mrs. Finchamp isn’t a believer in guardian angels, but she is a believer in the humanity of the man on the beach. In an age in which people often are quick to take credit for small deeds, he wanted no credit for a huge deed.

“Everyone in the family has had many turns crying over this story,” Mrs. Finchamp said. “I wish there were some way we knew who he was.”

Tell me something about the girl he saved, I asked. “She’s an absolutely marvelous young lady,” Mrs. Finchamp said. “She’s one of those high achievers in school. She’s pretty, a very good kid. She’s serious about her future, about wanting to go to college. She wants to be a chef. I always said, ‘You’ll need to go to Paris, and I think your grandmother should go with you.’ ”

Imagine how that anecdote would have sounded if the stranger on the beach hadn’t come along. The family will never forget that, nor his ephemeral moment in their lives.

And so, Mrs. Finchamp’s letter ended:

“This heroic man disappeared into the beach crowd before he could be properly thanked, and we don’t know his name. We hope he will see this letter and know that we are eternally grateful for the life of our beautiful granddaughter.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.