Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion

With water up to my waist and waves rolling in, I made the decision that I should go no further. I’d mustered enough courage to get over any immediate fear, but I was already cramping in the cold and I’m not a particularly strong swimmer. The decision I made not to dive in and swim further out was a rational one, as doubling the number of men struggling to keep from drowning wasn’t going to help anyone. I was helpless, and though I wasn’t responsible for any of it, I could sense the grief on the horizon, and I was making a conscious effort to numb the feeling.

When the surfer ran up I knew that if the man flailing sixty yards from shore hadn’t drowned already, he’d probably be alright. And the anxiety eased — I wouldn’t have to live with being the helpless bystander who looked on while someone drowned.

Let me now start from the beginning.

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco — grabbing my morning coffee, the warmth reminded me that spring had just arrived. Checking in with my friends Jason and Min Jung online, they had plans to go to the beach. I offered to take the bus and meet them, but they offered to pick me up, and as the afternoon was slipping away I agreed, eager to dip my toes in the sand and water.

It was a nice ride up Geary, with a stop at a market in Japan Town for snacks. Rounding the bend on Sutro Hill past the Cliff House has always been one of my favorite views — with the pastel row house on the left, punctuate by the windmills and the park, the broad expanse of the Great Highway and Ocean Beach running straight into the distance and the vast Pacific stretching off into the haze.

The sand was thick with beachgoers on the first warm Saturday of the year, and the typically strong winds were remarkably calm, though that meant there were few kites in the sky — my favorite thing on Ocean Beach is seeing the varried array of kites, from the colorful Chinese dragons to the huge yet acrobatic sails used by kite-surfers. Still, there would be dogs and people to watch, snacks to eat, and I’d brought a copy of Dubliners and a deck of cards, so I was happy.

We found a parking space rather easily, and the sand at the bottom of the steps from the parking lots was nice and warm. We walked to the water, and in my flip-flops I tested the temperature. Cold as ever (it never really warms up to anything remotely tolerable). Then we walked a few yards up the beach, but I didn’t really notice the couple at first, until Min Jung pointed to the man waving.

“Is he yelling help?” We weren’t sure what he said over the sound of the waves, but it definitely sounded like distress. A friend was on the beach, waving back, and he was only chest deep or so and on his feet, so he might be playing a joke to lure her into the water. But then he stumbled, and went down like a knocked-out boxer. I had already started to pull my phone and cigarettes from my pants pockets as Jason began walking towards him into the shallow water, still wearing his shoes.

When the man didn’t get up, Jason started running. I balled my coat up and handed it to Min Jung, running after him in jeans and a t-shirt, kicking off my flip-flops.

The man was on his back in about a foot of water, but breathing. He was wearing nothing but boxers and gym shorts. Jason and I pulled him by his arms until he became dead-weight. “Breathe, just breathe,” I told him. “Relax and breathe.” Once we had him on hard sand, I asked him if he could stand up. “Yes,” he said.

So I tilted him upright and lifted him up from under his shoulders. Immediately once we had him on his feet, he tumbled into me, and I almost went down but for Jason. We got his arms over his shoulders, and got him to dry sand, where his friend took my place. The man, so exhausted his speech sounded slurred, cursed her for waving back instead of getting help.

By that time two sheriffs had arrived on their quad-bikes. He collapsed at the feet of one, who quickly asked if there was anyone out there with him. He didn’t respond, so I repeated the question, closer and louder. We asked if there was anyone else out there, and it turned out there was. Almost immediately, Min Jung spotted him in the waves, much farther out than we found the first man.

The sherriff obvously wasn’t stripping down to run in, but he wasn’t stopping me, so now down to my shorts I ran out. It wasn’t more than a few yards in that the sands began to shift under my feet with the undertow, and I had to slow down. A few more yards and the waves started to slow me further. My shins began to cramp after a less than a minute, and I was breathing quick, short breaths because of the cold as I reached down and splashed water on my chest in the hopes of acclimating faster.

I dove into the next wave I faced, but as I surfaced, it hit me that it would be suicide to swim out after him. I got my footing again, and turned around to see two other men coming in after me on either side. I scanned the horizon, but it took me a moment to spot the other swimmer. When I did, I saw that he hadn’t made any more progress to shore — in fact, he seemed to be in the riptide and his head was barely above water, bobbing in the spray.

My thoughts turned to three surfers whom I’d seem as we were coming up the beach. They had wet suits and a flotation device, and were probably strong swimmers who knew the local currents. Could I get to them in time? I walked parallel to the beach, towards those surfers, tracking the head in the waves. Then was the moment of helplessness. All I could do was track him — and the other men who’d come in with me.

That’s when the young surfer arrived. “Is there someone out there?” “Yes.” “Where is he?” I pointed, “Straight in front of me is where I last saw him.” The surfer ran out and quickly began cresting the incoming waves on his board. My attention returned to the man who’d gone out further into the surf, the one in the polka-dot boxers — him I could still help if necessary.

I turned around, and Min Jung and Jason were waving me in, the sherriffs standing stoically at the waterline, a small crowd having developed. After a moment, checking the surfer’s progress, I ran to the closest sherriff, thinking to tell him about the other surfers further down the beach. “Search and rescue is on the way,” he told me when I got there, breathing heavily. Min Jung and Jason assured me that the first man was doing okay, and shortly after I looked back out, I could see the surfer, floating on his board and holding the second swimmer.

A fourth man had joined the other two strangers and myself who’d gone after the swimmer in our shorts. The man in the polka dot boxers had made it out. I let the three of them know that the rescuers were on the way. I watched, worried that the pair were still caught in the riptide, and if the young surfer could pull the man across the current.

Turning to walk back to shore, I heard the sirens on the fire trucks as they barrelled down Sutro Hill. In a couple of minutes, the surfer had made considerable progress toward shore. The firemen had arrived, but in boots and coats. Once the surfer into knee-deep water, the other three mean still out there helped hoist the man up into an army carry and walked him up to dry land just as the first surf rescuer in a wetsuit showed up.

The second swimmer was breathing, and at this point, there was nothing to do but get out of the way and let the professionals do their job. But I knew both of them would be fine, and said as much to Jason. The first swimmer was with his friend, under a blanket. The rescuers had turned the second on his side to keep him from drowning any water in his lungs. In five more minutes, both were loaded into trucks and off to the hospital.

I needed a cigarette, though there was a flash of guilt that my cigarettes were dry — what if one of the swimmers had died because I took an extra ten seconds to make sure my cigarettes stayed dry? The conversation between Min Jung, Jason and myself turned to reviewing the events and processing our emotions as we walked up the beach, looking for somewhere to sit down.

We walked up the stairs to the parking lot, and there another small scene had developed. A local cameraman was filming the rescue vehicles, and an officer in a white shirt and tie was directing everyone over the radio. I sat on the concrete and laid down, closing my eyes, crashing from the adrenaline. There was another flash of guilt when the thought occurred to me to introduce myself to the cameraman.

Eventually the commotion died down, and rested a bit, I suggested we celebrate “alls well that ends well” with some oysters at the Cliff House. But the cocktail menu had little to offer for Jason, a vegetarian, so we went to Louis’ instead — where the sight of the crusty sourdough and thoughts of slathering it with butter made me pretty much forget the oysters. We got a prime booth in the corner, with the Headlands lighthouse in the distance and the ruins of the old Sutro Baths below.

It was a fine meal. We all tore into the bread, which hit the spot, and Min Jung graciously let me steal a few scallops. Why hadn’t we acted sooner? Why hadn’t anyone else acted? How did our actions help or hinder, and was there anything more, or less, that we could have done? We came to some agreement that we had all played our own important roles. Jason was the first to commit to action. Min Jung quickly alerted a passerby on the beach to call the authorities. I’d judged the limit that the sincere but casual help a few strangers in shorts could offer wasn’t going to be enough for the second swimmer.

Later that night, I called my dad to thank him for all the lessons on marine safety, and my mother made me smile, calling me her hero. But we were all heroes in our own small ways. If someone has to be crowned with laurels, it should be the young surfer, since he was the one who snatched a drowning man from the sea.

I look forward to hearing the two swimmer are okay in the news somewhere. If there’s a lesson here that applies generally, it’s that you shouldn’t swim at Ocean Beach. Still, bring a towel. And don’t panic.

More from Min Jung.