Faces Claimed by Drowning Season

Drowning takes only seconds and is indiscriminate.

The youngest of this year’s 14 victims in Orange County was 2-year-old Cristina Rodriguez, who died in her family’s backyard swimming pool. The oldest was John Francis Giraudy, 70, found floating in the ocean.

High school athlete Armando Briseno, 17, was swimming alone when a rip current pulled him out to sea. Alexander Vertun, 4, was in a pool with more than 100 people when he slipped beneath the surface.

Whatever the circumstances, drowning is devastating to the family that must cope with grief, regret and often guilt if the accident happens at home in a pool, spa or bathtub.

“Nobody thinks it’s going to happen to their children,” said Mary Marlin, former chair of the Drowning Prevention Network of Orange County. “But the water doesn’t care. It will kill anyone.”

Some relatives of drowning victims will not talk about their loss, preferring to rebuild their lives privately. For others, sharing memories is therapeutic, helping them to heal. Not uncommonly, recriminations tear the family apart. Experts say more than half of the couples who lose a child in a drowning accident will divorce.

“Most parents have suicidal thoughts after the accident,” said Mary Glass-Schannault of Dove Canyon, a drowning-prevention activist whose son died in her backyard pool with seven adults present. “I blamed everybody at our house that day. There was so much hatred.”

Rather than placing blame, some families focus on finding strength to go on.

On July 17, the day Cristina Rodriguez died, her mother, Elizabeth, had left to run a quick errand. She left the toddler with stepsister Margie, 15, who put the child in her crib for a nap.

When Elizabeth returned, Margie was talking on the phone, and Cristina was missing. Stepsister Jackie, 12, found the toddler floating face up in the swimming pool.

Elizabeth’s screams drew neighbors, who called 911 and tried to resuscitate the 2-year-old.

In reconstructing the tragedy, the family theorized that Cristina somehow climbed out of her crib, opened a sliding-glass door, pushed through a metal gate with a broken hinge and got to the pool.

Last week in the yard of their white ranch-style Anaheim home, Elizabeth and Rafael Rodriguez held hands as they spoke of the child who was buried July 22 in a tiny coffin with her favorite Winnie the Pooh toy.

“She had just said ‘Mommy’ for the first time two days before she died,” said Elizabeth, whose knees are still scabbed over from kneeling on the cement pool deck as she wept and prayed while paramedics tried to revive Cristina.

The couple, smiling through tears, showed photographs of their baby.

“The only thing that keeps us going is our faith in God,” said Elizabeth, 30, an accountant for a manufacturing company. After Cristina’s autopsy, the coroner gave one of the baby’s earrings to Elizabeth, who had her right ear pierced at the top so she can always wear the tiny gold stud.

Rafael, 40, a manager at a car dealership, spoke softly of how much he had loved the baby girl. He had just bought her pink sunglasses because she had enjoyed playing with his glasses when she sat on his lap.

Everyone Handles Tragedy in Own Way

By contrast, the family of Alexander Vertun, Orange County’s most recent drowning victim, will not talk about the loss of their 4-year-old. He died July 24, a day after his father and 13-year-old brother found him unconscious at the bottom of the pool at Coto Valley Community Club. No lifeguard was on duty.

But even the most vigilant lifeguards cannot save everyone.

The day that Armando Briseno died, the lanky senior at Santa Ana Valley High School was hanging out with buddies at Newport Beach. Though the area was posted with warnings about tricky currents, inshore holes and uneven bottoms, as it always is, ocean conditions were mild. The teen was caught in a rip current and swept away to his death.

It happened the day before his prom.

“You should have seen him. He was so happy,” said his father, Roman Briseno, 43. “His tuxedo was ready for the prom, and he wanted to wash my new pickup so he could drive his girlfriend in it.”

Armando loved to dance and to take center stage occasionally. He had a keen wit and liked entertaining classmates by waiting for an instructor to leave a classroom, then rushing up to mimic the teacher.

He was an athlete, pitching and playing third base for the Falcons, Valley’s varsity baseball team. One of his dreams was to pitch in the major leagues, said his father, who often donned a catcher’s mitt to practice with his son. “He was starting to pitch over 80 miles an hour. He was coming along.”

In his school yearbook, Armando thanked his dad for “struggling to put our family ahead.”

Roman Briseno recalled a conversation with his son, who pulled him aside and told him he wanted to get a job, a good one, “so that Mom doesn’t have to work anymore and we can have more money to pay for groceries.”

“That’s the kind of boy he was,” the father said last week, sobbing into his hands.

Maria Briseno, 44, visits her son’s grave daily to pray and bring flowers.

“I don’t want another mother to go through the same pain and suffering that I have gone through,” she said. “If it’s a dangerous beach, then they need to tell people to stay away. They need warnings.”

Eric Bauer, marine safety captain for Newport Beach, said, “The issue here is that the ocean looks very inviting and benign, yet can be treacherous.” The 23rd Street beach where Armando Briseno died has a parking lot, Bauer said, and “anyone can park there from where ever, and that means good and poor swimmers.”

Willie Earl McFarland, 38, of San Bernardino drowned off the same stretch of beach two weeks later after he was caught in a rip current. Lifeguards had posted red flags warning of dangerous ocean conditions.

Last year, Newport Beach had 8.3 million beach visitors and handled 3,833 rescues.

National Safety Council figures show that California leads the nation in drowning deaths, followed by Florida and Texas. The Drowning Prevention Network reports that the number of drowning deaths of whites in Orange County has been decreasing in recent years, but the number of Latino deaths continues to rise.

The same day that Armando Briseno died, Dominic Cervantes, 6, of Anaheim slipped unnoticed into the water and drowned in his parents’ condominium pool.

On May 27, Juana Recendiz Nieto, 23, and her daughter, Blanca, 4, were found submerged in the community pool at their Aliso Viejo apartment complex. Neighbors say Nieto’s boyfriend, Moises Barreuta, still lives in the apartment with relatives but is in mourning and keeps to himself.

Adults who drown likely are victims of poor judgment.

On Jan. 7, Scott Villasenor, 36, of Lakewood drowned alone in a backyard pool in Anaheim. Yu Li Chang, 23, a tourist from Taiwan, drowned July 2 while swimming alone in a community pool in Fullerton. On July 19, Manuel Mera, 19, of Santa Ana was pulled dead from his apartment complex pool.

Miguel Cabus, 42, of Laguna Beach, went scuba diving alone off Moss Point in Laguna Beach on June 26. He was found dead, with scuba gear intact, floating 100 yards offshore. With no relatives in Orange County, his body lies unclaimed in a Santa Ana mortuary.

“We located a wife and children in the Philippines,” said Dwight Topping, a spokesman for the Orange County Public Administrator’s office, which takes possession of assets and protects them if blood relatives cannot be found immediately. “She has appointed an attorney to act on her behalf.”

John Francis Giraudy also died alone. The 70-year-old, who worked as a security guard and was widowed, moved in April to Costa Mesa. Neighbors said they did not know him. He was found July 12, fully clothed and floating in shallow water at Crystal Cove State Park. Officials have not yet found his next of kin.

At his apartment last week, someone had left leaflets advertising a furniture sale. On the small porch were some potted plants, a rocking chair, little else.

Some Accidents Are Difficult to Explain

In one incident this year, a child was saved but the parent drowned. On June 30, Nickey Pathak, 38, of Buena Park, strayed into the deep end of his apartment complex pool while playing with his 5-year-old daughter. He died; she survived.

Even strong, experienced swimmers can become statistics.

On March 18, Nathan Thomas Roth, 51, of Huntington Beach was found floating off Fisherman’s Cove in Laguna Beach after scuba diving.

Karen Roth said last week she is still learning to deal with the term “widow.” Her husband, she said, was her best friend and confidant, a bear of a man who stood 6 foot 3 and weighed 230 pounds.

He was in perfect health and had been diving 30 years as a way to relieve the stress of his job at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, where he was a supervisor in the microbiology lab.

On the day he died, he went out early in the morning with three men he had met at a local dive shop. The men told Karen Roth later that her husband had been excited about the dive. Halfway out to the spot the men had chosen, Nathan Roth made a hand gesture that he was going back to shore. His dive buddy followed, but the two were separated.

When Roth was found, his vest was fully inflated and his head was above water.

“The coroner’s office said the only thing abnormal was that he had an enlarged heart,” his widow said. “They can’t tell me why he died, though they did not find water in his lungs.”

The couple had been married for nearly 30 years. “He was really everything to me,” she said.

At home and at work, Roth was comfortable with women, she said.

The couple has two daughters, “and his co-workers were women, even our dogs were female. He was the best dad that a daughter could have.”

The daughters have followed their dad’s career path; both are in the medical field. Kyle, 24, is in nursing school. Erin, 20, works in customer service at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

The couple met when Roth was in the Marine Corps, stationed in Yuma, Ariz. Karen was 19 at the time. Six months later they were married. They remained in Arizona while Roth earned a degree in microbiology.

While in Yuma, despite its treacherous heat, Roth became an avid jogger and also participated in an Iron Man competition that included a swim, bike and run course.

The couple moved to Orange County and eventually to a Huntington Beach mobile-home park off Pacific Coast Highway.

“He wanted to be right across from the ocean,” Karen Roth said. “He left the house at 6:30 to go diving and never came home.”

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Times librarian Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.

* COMA VICTIM DIES

Ariel Caldwell, 14, of Santa Ana was unconscious 11 years after a pool accident. Pneumonia is cause of death. B4

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A Heavy Toll on the Young

Prevention programs have helped dramatically reduce drownings. Children represent a disproportionate number of cases in the United States and Orange County.

* To promote swimming pool safety, the Orange County Fire Authority will send residents a checklist and other information. The agency also supplies some product information and can send someone to check homes. Residents also may sign up for free CPR training and request a presentation of the safety program. Call (714) 532-7266.

Orange County Drownings in 2000

Sources: Orange County coroner, Times reports