Rescue Team Dives In Where Nothing Is Easy

It was to be a rare moment in the spotlight, one that rarely shines on the four lifeguard-paramedics assigned to the remote Isthmus Cove area of Santa Catalina Island.

County dignitaries had helicoptered in to cut the ceremonial ribbon on new housing for the men, replacing the low-ceilinged trailers where mold grew in the walls and lifeguards had to stoop to get in the door.

But even before the ceremonies could begin, Baywatch Isthmus lifeguards Kurt Frederick and Matt Lutton got a call and dashed off to aid a heart attack patient.

Later, before they could so much as share a buffet sandwich with Sheriff Lee Baca, Supervisor Don Knabe and Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman, the lifeguards’ radio went off, signaling a boat fire.

Welcome to Baywatch Isthmus.

To TV rerun addicts, “Baywatch” may mean babes, hunks and melodrama on the beach. But at this isthmus, Baywatch consists of four men who respond to all real-life emergencies within miles.

The four Los Angeles County employees are paramedics, lifeguards, firefighters, scuba divers and the on-scene medical staff for the USC hyperbaric chamber, an emergency dive facility on the west end of the island amid a famed Southern California dive spot.

Forget “Baywatch.” Think “Emergency” by the seashore, set in a quirky community that’s “Northern Exposure” in swimsuits. Then throw in a touch of “Flipper” or “Sea Hunt” underwater adventure.

“Baywatch Isthmus is the only team in the world who responds on land, on water, under water and in a chamber,” said Danny Douglas, a county lifeguard spokesman.

The thin strip of land that connects a western tip of Catalina to the rest of the island, creating two cherished harbors, is set apart both by water and a rugged island interior. Two Harbors, a matchbox village of one restaurant and bar, one general store, one dive shop and a red one-room schoolhouse, has about 120 full-time residents. The population can swell to 2,000 on summer weekends.

‘There Are Always Obstacles’

The area’s remoteness poses challenges to the lifeguards. A modestly equipped hospital in Avalon is 45 minutes away by car or boat--if the roads are clear or the swell not too rough. A full-fledged emergency room is an hour’s helicopter ride to the mainland. A city paramedic typically spends about 15 minutes with a patient before releasing him to a hospital. At the isthmus, it’s 90 minutes.

“The difference in working here is that nothing is ever easy. There are always obstacles,” Lutton said.

Not that such responsibility garnered any respect on a recent summer day as Rich Bates hosed down an already spotless Baywatch rescue boat.

“You call that working?” cracked one wag.

“I think it’s so pretentious that they call themselves Baywatch like on TV,” sniffed one 25-year-old. (For the record, “Baywatch” is the name of the L.A. County boat fleet. It was the winning entry in a 1947 newspaper contest to name the first lifeguard boat.)

Below deck, Kevin Marble, the team’s captain, checked the supplies in a medical kit. Yellow firemen turnouts, scuba gear, stretchers, a defibrillator and a teddy bear to soothe young patients shared the tightly organized space.

The four lifeguards grew up in Southern California beach towns, but other than being lifelong beach boys, they are a study in contrasts.

Marble, 44, is an admitted “type A, incapable of sitting still.” He twice has won the department’s Medal of Valor for rescues at the isthmus. His deeply tanned face is splotched with white, the pigment damaged from a skin condition.

“When I found out one of the triggers of this condition can be stress, I thought, ‘Well, that explains it,’ ” he said.

Bates, also 44, has his own motto: “ocean wet every day.” He’s reserved, his humor deadpan. He first worked in the isthmus in the 1970s, left and came back, giving up rank to do so.

Kurt Frederick, 34, is the family man, living at the isthmus full time with his wife Jennifer and their children, ages 3 and 5. The three single lifeguards split their time between the island and the mainland, or “overtown,” as it’s known in local lingo.

Lutton, 27, is the new guy with a puppy dog enthusiasm for the assignment. The interests that drew him to the job read like a menu of summer camp offerings: boating, rock climbing, swimming and diving.

In the past month, the lifeguards have responded to strokes, seizures, heart attacks and boat fires. But the calls that their ears are most tuned to are diving accidents.

On a recent day, Frederick bolted from the office to a boat where Lutton was waiting. A diver was suffering from decompression illness in Avalon and needed their expertise. The pair’s orange-trimmed boat pounded over swells as pelicans dove and a harbor seal surfaced. A dot on the horizon grew steadily bigger, materializing as the Baywatch boat from Avalon.

Both boats rocked as the lifeguards hoisted a 22-year-old dive instructor, Eric Lieuwen, onto the isthmus boat. Lieuwen was awake, making jokes. But he had bubbles of nitrogen along his spinal cord--the decompression illness commonly known as “the bends.” Those tiny bubbles can play havoc with the central nervous system, causing numbness or paralysis, depending on where they lodge. Lieuwen had a suspicious rash, his feet were numb, his hand tingling, all telltale signs.

Once ashore at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies where the chamber is located, Frederick began a neurological exam, pricking Lieuwen’s skin, moving his head, squeezing his fingers. Frederick then held a high-tech conference via computer with the chamber’s medical director, Dr. Jeff Sipsey, who was at County/USC Medical Center. A camera focused on Frederick as he described the diver’s symptoms.

Meanwhile, Lutton took a detailed history of Lieuwen’s recent dives, looking for clues as to what went wrong. He held a Michigan Sea Grant “Hugi” dive table. Karl Huggins, who developed the well-known chart of safe dive times, is the chamber’s program director. It was Huggins who downloaded Lieuwen’s computerized diving log, which had been attached to his respirator.

Lieuwen spent five hours in the chamber, under pressure the equivalent of 60 feet of seawater, while breathing a high concentration of oxygen. The combination of high pressure and increased oxygen levels can dissolve the nitrogen bubbles that form when divers stay down too long or can shrink the deadly embolisms suffered by divers who come up too fast.

Eventually Lieuwen regained feeling in his feet. But Sipsey, who went over that afternoon to direct the treatment, told the young dive instructor, who had a tropical Club Med job lined up for the fall, that he won’t be able to dive again for at least a month--or forever.

Isolation Is Hard to Endure

Isthmus lifeguards, all divers, use their knowledge of local currents and kelp beds to determine the cause of accidents. They also do rescue dives for victims.

With work at the isthmus challenging, even dramatic, and a rustic island setting that brings to mind a South Sea isle, many would expect that there would be a line of paramedics eager for assignment there. But Los Angeles County has a hard time finding people who can work at the isthmus more than two years, although many believe that it is a place and a job that takes at least two years to fully learn.

But there is an isolation here that is hard to endure. In the winters, storms howl and boat service to the mainland drops to three times a week. There’s no shopping, no movies, few conveniences. For married lifeguards it can mean asking a spouse to delay or give up a career.

Marble said it can get lonely and he has thought of leaving the isthmus. But once he gets on the water, with a pod of dolphins nearby, he decides to stay put.

“These waters are like swimming through an aquarium,” he said. “I never have to get on a freeway. And I start thinking I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”