Catching his second wave

The best surfers in the land were throwin’ water, threading the needle and pulling off 360 rotations at Huntington Beach during an exhibition session at the U.S. Open of Surfing. The record crowd of 85,000 watching from the pier, bleachers and the sand acknowledged the showy efforts politely.

Then a twig of a surfer, riding stomach-down on his board, using his elbows to prop up his head and chest, took off in a slow, dull horizontal glide across the face of a wave until it petered out and dumped him into the drink, where his friends quickly rushed to pull him up and set him back on his board.

And the crowd went nuts.

“Next time you’re having a bad day,” the public-address announcer intoned in what could have been a moment from a corny ‘40s movie, “just remember what you’re seeing out here.”

This was the latest chapter in the Jesse Billauer story. It’s the story of a kid who wanted, in the worst way, to perform with surfing’s elite. These days, at 24, he’s doing just that -- in the worst way. His life is a struggle between mourning a lost boyhood dream of thrilling audiences and building an adult persona that inspires them.

In 1996, Billauer was a 17-year-old student at Malibu High, planning to embark on a professional surfing career. He was surfing Zuma when a wave knocked him off his board and he fell headfirst onto a sandbar a few feet below the water. He couldn’t move. Friends kept him from drowning.

Doctors diagnosed the injury as a complete spinal cord break. Billauer was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from midchest down. He’d already gotten one reprieve. A few months earlier he’d been in a serious car accident and temporarily unable to move. Now at the hospital, his parents remembered what he’d said: “I’d rather be dead than paralyzed and not able to surf.” This time there would be no reprieve.

George and Cecile Billauer’s marriage, already shaky, broke up under the stress. They arranged for Jesse to live by himself with a 24-hour caretaker at the end of his senior year. He moved to San Diego and enrolled at San Diego State. He was, he could rationalize, lucky. Christopher Reeve had suffered the same type of injury but with more drastic consequences. He had no arm movement and needed a machine to breathe. Jesse could breathe on his own, move his head and eventually his arms and hands. But he couldn’t (and still can’t) cut his own steak.

Gradually, at the suggestion of his father, a chiropractor, the family set up a foundation, Life Rolls On, to channel donations to spinal-cord research. In 1999 the foundation sponsored its first celebrity/surfer golf tournament. In 2001, with another surfing-rehabilitation charity, it organized a surfing exhibition. Jesse’s older brother, Josh, a financial advisor, organized the events and handled the money.

Jesse began, haltingly, making motivational speeches. It was not what he had planned. “I’d envisioned myself at surf contests and my little kid running up to me saying, ‘Daddy, you did a good job,’ and my wife on the beach. That’s really what I wanted. That was one of my goals, to be young with my kid, to have a wife who supported me. That was my dream, and that got shattered.”

But slowly, he began to realize that he had a certain moral authority when he rolled before a young audience in his leopard-skin-upholstered wheelchair. He was them -- a chilling reminder that even teenagers are not indestructible, that life is short. Enjoy what you have, he found himself saying. Appreciate that you can brush your own teeth, climb a single stair. Hug your parents, even if it’s not cool. If your mom wants to give you a kiss before she drops you off at school, let her. If it embarrasses you, get her to tint the windows. If you see somebody in a wheelchair, don’t be afraid. “It might happen to you.”

He’d always thought about trying to get back into the water, somehow, but his body wasn’t strong enough. Three years after the accident, the same year the foundation was set up, some surfer friends started talking about it. He could barely raise his head off the board. With time and exercise, his arms strengthened (although he suffered fluid buildup in his elbows from putting so much pressure on them, requiring surgery). It didn’t matter. “I was beyond excited.” In the water, the burning sensation inside disappeared. He is a Pisces, he was where he should be.

Last year filmmaker Dana Brown was working on his documentary about surfers and their love of the sport, “Step Into Liquid,” when he attended a surfing-awards banquet in Anaheim. Billauer received an award and the audience watched a home video of him surfing. Without knowing anything about Billauer’s background, Brown was instantly intrigued and asked Billauer to be in the movie. Billauer was stoked.

“I ask so many people to do stuff” to go surfing these days, “but if someone calls me and says, ‘You wanna go surf?’ that’s the greatest feeling. I was real excited because before I got hurt, that was my whole thing. I wanted to be in a movie.” Today, when the film opens, he will be -- one in a parade of 19 recreational and world-class surfers featured. “Once I hit the water,” he says on screen, “I have no pain. Nothing -- noth-ing -- compares to that.”

“What he represents,” Brown said, “is the fact that the passion doesn’t leave you just when really bad times hit. It’s probably even more important to be passionate about something when everything else is falling apart.”

Jesse, stylish and charming with his two earrings and hip-hop patois, tries to stay focused on the good times. He loves the celebrity, the travel, the parties that his new role brings him, the chances to parasail and skydive. (“He told me about skydiving after he did it,” his father notes.) Brother Josh, two years older, also a surfer but more buttoned-down, wishes Jesse were equally enthusiastic about scheduling more fund-raising motivational talks.

“I’m working on getting him more motivated,” Josh said Sunday at the surfing tournament, standing by a Life Rolls On booth, where his father was hawking foundation T-shirts. “We’re two different people. He’s a professional delegator. He’s getting better ... I’m [more demanding of him] because I’m his brother. I don’t take the time to put myself in the chair.” Jesse gives his brother full credit for holding together the foundation, which Josh estimates has netted about $80,000, half of which has gone to the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

Jesse recently moved to Cardiff by the Sea, living across from the beach, with full-time caretaker Sonny Reece, who has been with him for five years. His parents admire his progress and maturity, tempered by the sheer difficulties of his day-to-day life. (He was a slender youngster, but today he has only 110 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame because of muscle atrophy, and even with a personal trainer it has been hard to gain weight.) Last week, George Billauer was talking to some underprivileged elementary-school-age children in Malibu, who were waiting for Jesse to show up for a speech, when one of the children earnestly asked how it felt to see your child paralyzed. Georgestarted to choke up, and for five or six seconds the room was quiet, until he regained his composure and said, “That’s how it feels.”

Four days later in Huntington Beach, a lifeguard’s jet ski pulled Jesse into the Pacific, where he lined up with the kind of people he’d dreamed about lining up with as a pro, big names like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado and Bruce Irons. They were volunteering their time between U.S. Open of Surfing heats for a 30-minute exhibition during which spectators would be exhorted to contribute to Life Rolls On and another charity, They Will Surf Again. Jesse got in two rides. After the second one, that long horizontal trip that wowed the crowd, there were eight minutes left and almost no way for him to jam in another one. But there wasn’t any question of what he’d do. He grabbed onto the jet ski and went looking for another wave. For a little while longer, nothing would hurt.