Stormin Norman  | Pacific Beach, San Diego

I was a lifeguard for 20 years in San Diego. We make a lot of rescues here. Do you know what I was doing today? I was in my lifeguard uniform.  I was on the naval base on Coronado Island. There I was talking to 1.000 people. You know, the military men are strong, young and risk-takers. In America, we call them the tip of the sword, the ones to go into battle and defend our country. But when they get to the beach, those are the people we watch out for, because they will go into the sea and end up being rescued by the lifeguards. It is impossible by courage or strength to swim against a rip current if you do not know that you have to swim out to the side.

Every time we do a rescue, we write all information down on an incident slip. Every year we rescue 10,000 people here in San Diego alone. But rarely does somebody drown. Unfortunately, last week a 19-year-old guy died. He and his friends graduated on Friday and got out to the beach some days later on Tuesday to have a BBQ. When they went out to swim they got caught in a rip current and one of the boys drowned. The crazy thing is, one of my hobbies is to be a basketball referee and that boy that died was on one of the basketball teams I was a referee.

What are your memories of saving people?
In my 20-year career, I’m retired now, I’ve saved 1,000 people. And here’s the thing. Let’s say half of them were able to struggle to get to shore, climb up the sand and make it under their own power. If half of them could save themselves, the other half could not.

As a lifeguard, I don’t just look at the ocean, I also look at the beach in a different way. When I look at people on the beach, I look for certain characteristics that tell me if they will be a rescue later on. What about that man over there who doesn’t have a tan, which means he doesn’t go to the beach very often. Or what about the obese man over there, or the man with the military haircut over there. When I see some marines down here on the beach I go ‘oh oh’. Ok, I’m gonna watch that guy until I see them in the water and I know that he can swim well. Those are all ‘dry land clues’. Out in the ocean, we have signs of distress: waving your arms, the universal sign for help. Or two kids that hold on to each other. Sometimes you can even see it in the eyes of people if they’re not having any fun anymore. And then you know what I do? I call it in, I say, Stormin Norman – my real name is Quintin Norman – is gonna make the rescue. I jump out of the lifeguard tower, grab my flippers, run down the beach and stop just in time to hand some pretty lady my sunglasses and say: ‘please hold these, I’m going to save the life of another. And she says: ‘ookay’ and watches me how I swim out there and  get the guy, or the lady back to the shore.