Riptide Lessons

* Re “Swimmers Rescued From Riptide,” March 24.

Richard Warchol’s remarkably accurate account of the rescue of my daughter and me was a prime example of good old professional journalism. In recounting a complex situation, it would have been easy to get the story wrong, as [other media] did. Warchol interviewed the people involved and recognized how well my son, Shelby, organized the rescue.

There are lessons about rip currents to be learned here, even for competent swimmers. My daughter, Sheryl, and I have been swimming half-mile laps along the Ventura shore for 30 years. We have dealt with various kinds of rips.

On March 23, we found ourselves unable to angle through a series of rips concealed by wind chop. When she signaled to Shelby on shore that we were in trouble, he knew better than to come out without a flotation device. Being a Navy jet pilot with more than 300 carrier landings under his belt, he moved fast and cool.

Dashing almost half a mile to put in a 911 call, he also found a surfer named Joe Devere, a Coast Guard reservist trained in rescue. While Joe paddled out to give us a board to rest on, Shelby met a Fire Department truck that only had life jackets. He grabbed two and swam out to put one on his sister and rig her in a rescue sling when the helicopter arrived.

To warrant all this equipment was embarrassing, but seeing that chopper swing around Pitas Point was a lovely sight. As was Deputy Frank Underlin, who dropped in wearing swim fins to provide the extra push to get through the rips.

The greatest relief was having my daughter swung onto the beach (“Oh, God, my thighs,” she said on seeing cameras). My son made his way around the rips to come ashore quite easily.

Sheryl and I had been in the ocean close to an hour, not wearing wetsuits. In that time we reminded each other to conserve energy and wait. Although we still had ample strength to swim and tread water, our brains were getting soggy from ducking waves, not drawing enough full breaths. I had a vivid glimpse of how you lose focus while breathing shallow.

When my son had to endure news reports saying he was part of the problem rather than the solution, he merely chuckled, “Well, what did you expect?”

What we expect is the level of accuracy provided by Richard Warchol and The Times. We might also expect a rescue truck based by the ocean to carry either a paddle board, raft or swim fins and rope long enough to be of use. In Hawaii, paddle boards are standard equipment on rescue trucks.

BILL STRATTON

Ventura