Watching, Waiting, Rescue! Then Watching, Waiting ...

His office is a 6-by-6-foot fiberglass tower set at the edge of Huntington State Beach. Here 20-year-old Justin Arana spends eight to 10 hours a day as a lifeguard.

On Friday, he pulled duty on Tower 3, one of the busiest because of its proximity to sandbars that allow swimmers to touch the bottom for 50 to 75 yards near the Santa Ana River jetty.

By 11 a.m., the parking lot was half full and Arana was drying himself with a towel after logging the day’s first rescue: pulling out a body boarder caught in a rip current.

“He said he got tired, so I just pulled him in closer to shore so he could stand. He was OK,” Arana said as he quickly pushed up his sunglasses and grabbed his binoculars.

His eyes focused on a group of teenagers on body boards. “Oh, man, there’s a rip firing right behind them and they don’t know it. I think this may be a rescue,” he said.

He grew tense. He threw off his jacket and in the same motion reached for the phone to lifeguard headquarters. Seconds ticked by.

If he lifted the receiver, it would automatically signal headquarters that a rescue had begun.

But as suddenly as the rip developed, engulfing the teenagers in brown, choppy water, it died out. He let go of the phone and said in a muted voice: “False alarm.” The jacket came on, the eyes peeled toward the horizon.

It was like that at Tower 3. Long periods of watching broken by a few tense moments of rescue action.

Now in his fifth season, Arana has pulled hundreds out of the water.

On weekdays when the waves are gentle, he can work eight hours without a rescue. But when high temperatures inland result in large beach crowds on a weekend, he can have as many as 10.

By the end of his shift Friday, he had logged seven.

From his perch, Arana can see 360 degrees. Santa Catalina Island was plainly visible in front of him, as were thunderheads coming in over the desert behind him, high above eastern Orange County.

The towers are spartan: no carpet, no air-conditioning, no bathroom. Their function is to shade the lifeguard about 10 feet above the sand and provide a view.

Suddenly, a youth on a yellow body board was in another rip. “Gotta go!” he said, lifting the receiver and jumping down from the tower with his lifeguard tube -- a long flotation device that can be wrapped around struggling swimmers -- in his right hand.

He grabbed a pair of swim fins at the bottom of the tower’s ladder and sprinted 50 yards, entering the water after he donned the fins.

Body boarder Eli Brewer, 14, of Fullerton saw Arana swimming toward him but later said he didn’t need help. He took Arana’s offer, however, and was pulled to shore.

Eli’s mother, Kim, said her son is a strong swimmer but she was thankful a lifeguard was watching.

At the tower, Arana said he noticed a certain bravado in the youngster’s tone when he swam to him.

“He asked, ‘Why can’t I get in [from the surf]?’ I said, ‘Dude, you’re in a rip, that’s why.’ I said, ‘C’mon. I’ll give you a free ride in,’ ” Arana said.