Girls and Buoys

In 16 years guarding the beach, Carrie Johnson has dealt with every kind of man out there.

She’s heard all the “Baywatch” jokes, shared lockers meant for men and occasionally had to argue with macho swimmers who seemed to prefer drowning to being rescued by a woman.

She knows not to be sensitive.

“You have to be willing to be part of a boys’ club. It’s a physical job,” she said. “You don’t wear your makeup and high heels to work.”

Chalk it up to a matter of pride. Anything a male lifeguard can do, she can do, too.

In the pantheon of California culture, the lifeguard occupies a special place. Think movie star without the money, cowboy without the horse. Now, 20 years after the first female lifeguards hit the beach in Ventura County, women have made a permanent place for themselves in the lifeguard tower. And despite the “Baywatch” stereotypes, they have proved every bit the equal of the men.

This year, women make up fully 30% of the 39 summer lifeguards in the Ventura sector, an area that includes Emma Wood, McGrath and San Buenaventura state beaches. That’s as high as it’s ever been, but the state Department of Parks and Recreation says it’s still looking for a few good women.

“We’re actively recruiting at swim meets and water polo games,” said Steve White, the supervisor in the Ventura sector. “We hit the high schools. We’re looking for diversity in our work site.”

Things are better today, but Johnson keeps around a job announcement from the 1970s, just to remind her what it used to be like. “Women need not apply,” it says.

White remembers resistance to female lifeguards in San Diego County when he first started.

“There were these traditional male issues. Is she strong enough to handle the physical job? Does she have the endurance for multiple rescues?” he said. “They were blockheads. And there are still blockheads out there.”

Even so, most younger women guards can’t comprehend such archaic attitudes. They even used the same locker room until three years ago. They do just what their male counterparts do.

Just take a trip to the beach to see.

Mindy Whelan is just a rookie, still a teenager.

She scans the beach while she talks, her eyes squinting into the sun and her knees bent, as though she’s ready to dash off at any moment.

And then she does--right in the middle of a sentence. She bolts across the beach and thrashes through the water in a churn of foam.

Two kids are oblivious to the riptide that could drag them away.

All along the coast, these waters can be tricky.

The underwater dunes can be deceptively deep. Rip currents--the phenomenon caused when surf is pushed by waves onto shore and then funneled back out to sea--seethe offshore and can easily tug a swimmer away from the sand.

The water near the piers and around the jetties, where dredging has changed the underwater topography, are especially dangerous. That’s why Whelan never takes her eyes off the water. After a save, when returning to the tower, she walks backward, keeping her eyes on the water.

“You get these little kids who step into holes and are suddenly head-deep,” she says. “At Ventura County beaches you have lots and lots of sandbars and in-shore holes. In a minute the kids could be underwater.”

But is she muscular enough to rip a child from the pull of a treacherous current? Can she handle the weight?

Such questions are absurd to Whelan. Everyone weighs less in the water.

“It’s never a question of ‘Oh, she isn’t strong enough,’ ” said Erica Wilhelmson, a lifeguard for eight years. “I can’t bench what my supervisor can, but I can swim just as fast. It’s not a question of who has more body mass--it’s how you execute the rescue.”

Women get plenty of respect from their male counterparts.

“All our female lifeguards are as strong as any of the men,” said Danny Nahmias, an experienced guard. “A few of them are by far stronger,” he said.

The lifeguard pool draws mainly from the county’s swimmers and water polo players--women with thrusting legs and powerful arms. Wilhelmson is a champion paddle-board racer who regularly smokes her male competitors.

Although women have worked as lifeguards for two decades, in the early days there were few. As with fire and police departments, requirements favored the men. Only the top 50 finishers in a 1,000-yard ocean race were allowed to move on to rookie school. Since almost all rescues occur within yards of the beach, that kind of endurance test accomplished very little except to keep women out of the lifeguard towers.

The pace of change accelerated in the late 1980s, when state parks officials decided to aggressively court women and minorities.

Now any strong swimmer who finishes the 1,000-yard swim in less than 20 minutes can qualify to move on to the interview stage.

It’s not a quota system, White insists. If anything it means the women are comparatively tougher than the men, Johnson said.

“I think that a guy competitive swimmer and a girl competitive swimmer will generally have the same ability level within their gender,” she said. “So, you’ve got a much higher class of women who are actually making it into the ranks.”

Once they qualify and pass the interview, all rookie guards, men and women, go through a weeklong boot camp in Huntington Beach.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Stefanie Weireter, a 19-year-old rookie. A quarter of those in Weireter’s class dropped out before the end of the week, she said.

“There’s a physical and mental strain. It’s 12-hour days. I’m glad I did it, but I never want to go through it again.”

But the hard training pays off.

Whelan, at 17 the sector’s youngest guard, once saved two kids at once. A riptide swept the children out to sea. Whelan charged into the surf, told them to grab her floating buoy, then towed them to shore.

Kim Palting, a lifeguard for two years, once had to administer first aid to a man after his boat smashed into the shore.

A guard’s first save is often the most heart-pounding. The adrenaline surges. Then comes the slap of the cold waves.

“I was scared, but I was ready,” said Brianne Fowler, 19, a rookie who made her first save shortly after starting work at the end of June.

The one surprise for the female guards, now that they have won over male colleagues in the tower, is the response they sometimes get from men in the water. Some men are humiliated to be rescued by a woman.

“On occasion, they won’t take the buoy from you,” said Palting. “You have to get tough and say, ‘Take this right now,’ and then they start sinking and panicking and take the buoy.”

And there are still the catcalls on the beach. Johnson gets requests for dates. But in these days of female empowerment, she says, male guards face the same harassment from women.

“I hear ‘nice butt,’ and I just say “thanks,’ ” she said. “The same goes for women toward men. They’re totally gawking at the [male lifeguards.]”

Occasionally they must deflect a joke about Pamela Anderson, the pneumatic blond who helped make “Baywatch” a phenomenon--or play celebrity, thanks to the widespread popularity of the series.

“Every day you hear a ‘Baywatch’ joke,” said Weireter. “You get people taking your picture to send to their relatives back East.”

It’s all part of being on the beach, in a job that requires both public relations and a strong sense of responsibility.

“We’re not allowed to get to a victim any slower. Men aren’t expected to do any better,” said Johnson. “We’re all studs.”