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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back for the third time Ocean Lifeguard and the man behind Never Off Duty, Jason Bitzer.
Now in this third conversation, we discuss a host of topics from the neuroblastoma diagnosis his young son James had, immunotherapy versus radiation and chemo,
fitness standards in the lifeguarding community, the prevalence of shark attacks, the importance of trauma kits and so much more.
Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 1000 episodes now.
And I also want to put one more thing in.
I don't normally do this in my intros, but today I released my second book, Kindr, which you can find on ebook and paperback on Amazon.com or Amazon in your country.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show Jason Bitzer.
Enjoy.
Well, Jason, I want to start by saying welcome back to the Behind the Shield podcast.
We had a phenomenal conversation last time and I know we're going to unpack some some new topics today.
But firstly, I just want to welcome you back.
Thanks, James. I love going on this podcast because I get to hear from other angles to other professions and kind of adapt it to what my expertise is.
So it's good. I love listening to the podcast, too. So I appreciate it.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
I'm actually back in my hometown after 22 plus years. I purchased a home in Manasua, New Jersey, and I'm back here now.
Pretty much settled with my family for my son's health care, but doing good.
My kids are in school and kind of just, you know, normal family life, just not in Hawaii right now.
Well, speaking of your son, I think that'd be a good place to start.
Since we did the the last episode, obviously, your little boy started having some health issues.
So kind of walk me through as a parent what you saw. I think these stories are really important in case someone else sees the same thing in their own child.
And then walk me through the diagnosis, some of the self-advocacy that you forged to make sure that he got the best care.
And then let's talk about where he is now.
Yeah. So being on an island, you know, like it's it's one of those things in Hawaii that it's such a wonderful place, but it has its limitations.
And we got blindsided back in February of 2023, where my son was perfectly healthy literally days and weeks before.
He just suddenly stopped walking. It seemed he had like some type of inflammation just kind of to speed up through the process of what happened is he stopped walking one day after beach day.
And we thought maybe it was the sand, just, you know, soreness.
They thought it was synobitis, which is typically in boys post viral syndrome. They ruled that out.
Sent him back home. Another week went by. He was doing better. Went to do another beach day.
Went back in. Same issue after a litany of trying to fight with different scans because just just the way it is.
And it's no fault of the medical system will start with one part of the body and move on.
They're not just going to go to like a full body MRI or PET scan or something.
They're going to kind of go, you know, by the numbers because of costs and just and just the way they the protocols are run.
We went through the process. We got a bone aspiration and long story short, sadly, he was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma, which is an extremely rare cancer.
One in one point seven million the last I checked and stage four because of his age and also because of his bone marrow.
When we come to find it was 85 percent of his bone marrow. So it had metastasized from a very small tumor on his left adrenal gland and come to find later when we got to New York's little bit of his limbs were affected.
But it does a lot of the times a neuroblastoma go to the adrenal glands. It sounds like neurological because neuro, but it's not.
It can kind of find its way into any part of the body. But fortunately, it was in the spot that it's the normal place where they look to as far as the soft tissue.
But the bone marrow was very prevalent. They do a score, a score called curing score of 25.
We were at an 18, so we were super high, very, very, very daunting, especially when we didn't understand the disease.
And what we did is we basically looked at the options. I actually canceled the surgery in front of the surgeon just because I didn't feel confident of no offense, anyone that the knowledge base of this disease in Hawaii.
They didn't treat it much. They had two studies and they basically were looking at the sky saying, hey, this one's going to make your son step and sterile in death.
And so this one and we don't know the outcome.
The doctor there, even within our first 15 minutes of talking, said, yeah, this is one of those diseases where we need to talk about the ethics of treating, where it gets to where we just don't treat anymore because it's not ethical.
So those are the first conversations we're having there. No offense to them. It's just, you know, they I have a very high fighting attitude.
I'm not going to say no for an answer. I'm not going to just take a defeat before we even start.
And in that process, I actually fortunately got a call from Sloan outside of network just to have a quick consult while I was about to go into surgery with my son.
I saw a two to one number and I just picked it up on speaker and handed it to a very great doctor in Hawaii, too, which was very applicable to speak to them, not knowing it was going to be our doctor later.
I thought it was just an admin person. But that conversation, I tried to listen as intently as I could.
And I canceled treatment in Hawaii. We put in the port there and under Sloan's guidance, we did the first round of chemo.
And then we were on a plane early April, late March and made the move with basically four boxes to go to Sloan Kettering.
And through that whole process, we've we've just been learning about the disease and kind of trying to pick up, pick up the pieces where we could, so to say.
So that got us, you know, that got us there. How was James at that point?
So he had just turned three in November. So neuroblastoma is weird.
And we've and I'll give some details again. I'm not a doctor.
So do your own research. But we found some interesting things just because a lot of the information that was being delineated to us, mostly when someone's an infant to one, they don't worry about neuroblastoma.
They let it go just because it usually processes out the tumor will go away and it won't be an issue once they get to two and a half, three.
It jumps pretty quickly to stage four because the tumor is matured and that's wild.
But then I come to find that what's the differentiating between a two and a half year old, three year old and a one year old.
It's breastfeeding. Right. So mother's milk and something we found over the last six months through my hunch that colostrum would help his gut health
from all the antibiotics and things that they give them. My wife ran with that and found a derivative called lactoferrin, which is they spin it in a centrifuge.
And this material drops out and it's an iron binder, which helped him through his chemo when he had a relapse.
And it boosted his blood counts really off the chart for how much treatment he was getting.
So right now, a lot of different parents are using it because it's benign when it comes to interactions with any of the Western treatments.
And it's a big inflammation. You know, just it drops inflammation grade there.
You know, the blood counts go up, the iron goes up, all the neutropenic things that happen with chemo lessen.
So we've come to find some really cool stuff.
And I'm just very blessed to have a biologist as a wife, scientist as a wife that kind of backs my crazy ideas because it's starting to work.
That's interesting to say that I just flashback to growing up on a farm.
That was a veteran research. And I remember ice cube trays filled with colostrum.
And I think if I remember rightly, they used to defrost it and then we'd bottle feed the young lambs that were struggling.
So that does make a huge amount of sense.
It does. Yeah. And kind of like, you know, they're going to have to do more studies.
But my wife found white papers that were being studied in India and they were using it with high grade curcumin, which is turmeric,
but like not synthesized, but really like a very strong derivative of it.
And the two combined help with radiation effects and actually help chemo find the tumor cells.
So it's weird how it's just such a natural thing, but actually it's helping the Western,
but also on the back end on a daily just helps general health and gut health and all the things and the inflammation markers.
So what's interesting is I've had this conversation many, many times coming from a basal medical perspective because I'm not an M.D.
I'm certainly not a specialist, but we're taught a lot more of the building blocks.
And when you think about certainly the 80s, 90s treatment of cancer, basically it's agent
orangeing the entire human body and then fingers crossed that it's going to back up.
That's it. That's what we were doing essentially the first six months.
Yeah. So you're breaking them down to build them up.
Absolutely. So then I'm hearing more now about the immunotherapy, which sounds like it's a lot more promising.
So what was that spectrum of treatments that James went through?
So they started with and it makes sense because I asked this right when I got there, said, why if chemo is known to do what it does and immunotherapy is working?
Why are we doing chemo and immunotherapy versus immunotherapy?
The theory behind it is that when cells are rapidly growing, you need to freeze them in their tracks, which does have a lot of validity.
And then the immunotherapy on the back end teaches your immune system to fight that specific cancer.
So whether it's, you know, it could be a certain type of leukemia or it could be a certain type of melanoma or for an R case neuroblastoma,
there's there's targeted things on the end that help the GD2 and find that and actually target and fight it.
So I love immunotherapy. It is a very intense procedure, but the juice is worth the squeeze.
It's what cleared him. It cleared him with this one that Sloan specifically got the research, what is called 3F8.
And it's just because that's the number that they found.
But the 3F8 was a humanized version of the dino taxidermide, which is the one they found before, which was a chimera, which the body can uptake, but it also can reject depending on the person.
So this one was a much more intense, the 3F8. It's done over an hour versus 12 hours.
It worked really well. And unfortunately, it cleared him.
Fortunately, it cleared him after two months, but he had a very small relapse clearing in September and then having a relapse in February of bony tissue, bony material, and is left humorous.
So it was very heavy news, but I wasn't, you know, just my knowledge base of the of the disease grew.
And then we went back into dino tucks. And what they do is they switch so that way you don't get resistant to one or the other.
And I was always wondering why wouldn't you stick with one that's already working?
But it's just like anything. It's like your body gets adjusted and then the efficacy.
So they're very good about managing on how they use their tools.
So that's that's why we went to Sloan, specifically from the Western side.
So what about emotionally, mentally?
You know, obviously, James is there doing all the fighting himself and going through the suffering, but that takes a toll on siblings, on parents and then obviously the patient as well.
So walk me through those those elements, because they don't seem to be as discussed as, you know, the actual chemistry is going on.
Yeah, I think as a parent, there's there's only so much you can take as far as watching.
You know, unfortunately, I just don't want to candy coat this because if anyone is preparing for this or have been through this,
your experience is extremely relevant because it's the only thing I can think of is even comparable to being at war.
But I almost think it's worse than it because it's your own child and there's no target to fight.
So you're stuck in this conundrum of decision making without without a determined outcome.
You don't know what your decision now, if it's going to be successful or not, but you do need to make a decision on their behalf and advocate for them and the stress of that.
And then also being surrounded.
It's like this is a bad way to think of it.
It's a bad terminology, but the only way I can think about it is like if you want to see clowns, you got to go to the circus.
And if you go to a cancer ward, you're going to see a lot of children with cancer.
So the thing is, if you're going to the place where the negativity is,
you have to have a very strong mind to stay positive in that foxhole.
And it's very difficult.
I have from our from my experience of being a first responder, being in critical situations,
probably a little bit more resilience to stress than most people.
But it definitely I had my moments of very close to breaking.
My wife, obviously, was there multiple times, but I had to be there to keep her up.
One of the things that you don't really account for when you jump into this is that, yes, you're in your own battle,
but because there's parents surrounding, you're going to support each other and you will see some with success and some with loss.
And it's you cheer the winds and you mourn the losses.
And they're both constant and sometimes disturbing.
So we've lost two friends along the way that we're very, very, very, very like to this day.
And I think indefinitely will be very hard.
And I can't imagine for the parents because how like James became friends with them, we got close.
Some of them I thought were going to be out of the woods in a better position than James with different diseases,
but similar getting treated and procedural things go wrong.
And, you know, something goes right when it should have gone left.
Infection sets in and then, you know, it's just the way the world works.
It's just who knows?
Like there's a lot of happenstance in the medical world that you can't predict as good as you could see someone one day.
And then the next day they've gone.
That can be from a car accident, be from, you know, cardiac arrest.
You just you just don't know.
So life is fragile.
And this this makes us even more so aware of it.
So, yeah, that was that was one thing that I would say is just like prepare your mind for
an unthinkable amount of things that you're going to come across.
It's not just going to be your own world.
It's going to be the world that you're brought into.
If that makes sense.
It does. Yeah. And I appreciate that perspective.
I think one of the things that I've seen from Make-A-Wish kids that have come to the station when I've worked there and then,
you know, obviously videos from, you know, from social media of incredible young boys and girls that are going through this is
the seemingly incredible strength that these young, young people have.
Whereas, you know, as you get older, you know, I'm sure we would exhibit our suffering a lot more.
So what did you witness, not just in James, but in the ward as far as this young resilience that seems to be fortunate?
They're definitely like beyond my heroes.
I think I understand why that is, not just because they're young.
It's just that when you're a child, your next play date or your next thing is really your world view.
Whereas you haven't had, you know, 20 to 40 years of adulthood that could kind of crush a man's spirit on the day to day life.
So it's hard to like sometimes muster up a fight within a fight.
Whereas a child just wants to hang out with his buddies and they don't have that world view of whereas like they're not looking at the tree and going to hit it.
You know what I mean? Like they're not looking at the negative.
They're only looking at the positive. So as bad as things may be,
they have a really good perspective of how to look beyond it.
And if you give them, I tried to be like him, meaning like I would be like, OK, James can be positive, I can be positive.
So even if I had to force that, I'm not going to look at him and have him see me droopy eyed and crying and just upset and add to a negative situation when he's not that way.
That doesn't make any sense. And that's hard to tell a parent to do that.
But it is a necessity. So I tried to look at things of like what is needed for this child to stay positive in the worst situation.
And so a lot of the times we would just play for hours.
Like we'd be up till midnight because he couldn't sleep.
But if I could distract him and he had the energy, we'd be just playing whatever he wanted to do.
And, you know, in your stress, sometimes the last thing you want to do, like your finances are dropping, your jobs falling apart, moving.
The last thing you want to do is play, but you're going to have to follow his lead, follow your child's lead and what energy they give you.
You need to match and not bring that down.
And sometimes when they are down, you got to figure a way to get them up.
Even if it's if it's beyond you, it's like you can do it.
You just have to kind of put your brain on the side and do what you need to do.
Like, you know, just go against your natural reaction to the situation.
Absolutely. And what about James? How's he doing now?
He's great.
We have we cleared scans last week for the second one in a row.
Thank God. And he did treatment last week and we just got scheduled for his final treatment of this course.
So that will be September 9th. And then we scan in October.
And I don't when I did this, I don't want people to understand like I don't look at things of anything ever being done.
It's just everything in life is a continued process.
I mean, we're very positive. He's doing great. Cancer is not coming back in my mind.
We're going to stay in this pocket. But I just have to look at everything day by day now.
So like we're making plans, but they're always interchangeable.
So, you know, he scans in October. If everything's clear, we're going to go visit in Hawaii and actually take a family vacation in November.
But we've been there before. So like we just go whatever happens as long as he's happy and smiling and my daughter's happy and smiling.
I really the rest is just like schematics. We just go with the flow and do the best we can kind of thing.
Beautiful. And then what about your daughter? One last thing.
When I've heard, especially in this case, you know, when one of the siblings is going through something so brutal,
obviously the focus is going to be on that child a lot and that sibling can feel left out.
Yes. So she obviously she's she's a champ.
She went from never tying her shoes in her whole life from Hawaii to living in the upper east side of New York and riding on subways in a blink of an eye.
So her ability to adapt is wonderful.
That doesn't mean the psychological effect of seeing her go through this is is not daunting or irrelevant because she she dealt with it.
She went to three schools already and finally got settled.
She moved from her island home into New York City and then into family and friends houses and then rentals and then finally getting settled within a six month period.
And she's doing great, though. She's she's surfing again.
She's playing sports. She's getting really good at softball.
The one good thing is her education. She really kind of buckled down and she's doing really well in school.
So I have absolutely admiration for her because I don't know.
I don't know. I like I don't know how things are going to pan out.
You try, but you just don't know. And she's done very well.
It is hard because he gets a lot of attention and he needs it.
But she's also very caring and loving towards him, even in spite of her maybe getting neglected sometimes.
But what I do is I try to like. So, for example, a very nice person who I just met had given us tickets to a Yankees game and she's really big into softball and baseball.
So I'll make time where I'm like, OK, these three hours, we're going to go to this what you like.
And we swap. We figure out ways that way.
She's she's because when they're in the same room, even just as a young sibling, a young sibling always gets the attention anyway.
As the one gets to adolescence, it's like their self, their independence, so they start getting less and less.
And at that age of 10 years old, you're not quite a teenager where you're independent.
You're not quite the baby anymore. So you're like in this weird space.
You have to you have to jungle. So we're learning.
But we feel like we're doing a fairly good job of it.
Beautiful. Well, let's transition to the world of lifeguarding now.
We have several things that we're going to discuss, but sadly, I mean, you spent your whole career lifeguarding on the ocean.
I spent my early career lifeguarding on pools, water parks and lakes, so never on the ocean.
But, you know, have a lifeguarding background again.
And we had that absolute tragedy in CrossFit where Lizar Dukic was drowned and seemingly in front of lifeguard.
So this isn't a blame game, obviously.
You know, there sadly sometimes just that perfect storm of all the wrong elements.
But from a lifeguard perspective, obviously, what's important is to learn from lessons and make sure it doesn't happen again.
So talk to me about that event through your eyes.
So like. Good or bad, every time I've done a large major production or event, there's a debrief.
But more importantly, there's a safety meeting prior.
I wasn't there, so I'm not going to arm armchair quarterback response or logistics, because that's hard.
I'm assuming there was a medic team there.
It's a big organization. I've trained CrossFit for over a decade.
I love the modalities. I do like that type of group workout.
I like all of it. I like the competition side of things. It's all good.
It's it's very like lifeguard centric, even though they're not lifeguards in that sense.
But a lot of lifeguards like that type of training modality, the ERG.
All those things are great. You know, things that we do as well.
I will say, though, I didn't see a lifeguard on the water.
So I'll let that flesh itself out as the investigation goes, because I'm sure there will be one.
That's the type of thing that happens in deposition.
And that's why I'll reserve judgment.
But I will say the first things first, there was a loss of life.
So let's respect that. It's very sad.
Now, was there a medical condition? Was there panic?
The video looked like that competitor wasn't a very competent water person.
And they're under a lot of duress from the stress of the workout.
Now, should you exclude someone that doesn't have water capability?
Yes, no, I'm not sure.
They should definitely do a screening for that if they did great.
Good on them. If they didn't, that's something that should have been thought about.
Secondly, when I do water safety, something of that nature,
when it's kind of a set up for a run, swim, run or a distance swim, an open water swim, a lake paddle.
So anything that has water apparatus, at minimum you need a front lead and a back lead lifeguard.
Meaning that there's no one left behind.
There should be a third in the middle because in those packs,
whether it's an Ironman or it's a fun swim or whatever it may be,
you need eyes on a one to eight ratio, really.
So ratios are important. Attention spans are important. Equipment is important.
So maybe they didn't need a jet ski, but someone on a rescue board on front and back at minimum,
I would have had three for that type of thing doing loops.
And then with someone catching from like a just like a very good visual apparatus,
there should someone be in a perch as well watching, so physical.
It's also good to have these days, they even have AI to back you up.
So if you had some type of camera that could they do do those things where they they dictate stress.
So even if you had someone managing a monitor to see blind spots.
But again, I'm a safety risk management specialist. I go overboard.
That's what I do, because I'd rather spend an extra couple thousand dollars at the event,
not lose a life and spend millions on the legal aspect of everything.
So I'm always front ending everything. I do see this a lot. No offense to CrossFit.
It's I see a lot of lacks in general when it comes to production events, whatever it may be.
Not so much in like Hollywood, because they're very great about that.
But I do see it in non-union, non-based event production where they cut corners in the wrong area.
They might spend a ton of money on production value, but then their safety is marginal.
EMT at best, if they're lucky, EMR, volley services, something like that.
They're not they're not paying attention to it. And that that bothers me because that's the athlete.
Does that make sense? So it does.
In my opinion, it's first things first, safety first.
We always say it, but it doesn't really get it doesn't really get the attention that it's needed.
When you have an EMT, not to be offensive or a medic on staff, but that's an oh shit element.
That's not a preventative measure when it comes to aquatic safety.
You're going to need to have specific water safety that works with the ancillary safety team
for if and when something does happen that they back them up and transport.
But you need one prevention and two, the proper equipment, three, the proper certified staff.
And hopefully this changes things because it has to.
I would hate to see this happen again. That's all I can say.
Yeah, I mean, I've only seen that one video clip, which is a few tragic things.
There appears to be people that seem like lifeguards around.
One is seemingly staring at him when it happens.
And I just remember I'm talking again, like absolute basic.
This is what you learn in the pool when you become a lifeguard.
But just if someone is vertical in the water and they're bobbing.
And that was what it seemed to be. And so we talked before we hit record.
Again, this is just unpacking it, not blaming anyone.
I mean, I wasn't there. And even the video is very grainy.
And you can't be completely inclusive from that one thing.
But did you see anyone with like a rescue can or tube? I didn't see that.
I can't remember if someone was holding.
But I mean, it seemed like there were some sort of water staff.
And again, were the actual search for an experience.
And that's why I reserve judgment.
First things first, you know, the bereavement of somebody who passed.
That's that's worse.
The worst thing is losing an athlete during competition.
But from from like my professional,
you can always do more so you should have a minimum standard.
And the records of any event will be like, hey, did you have a safety briefing prior?
Did you have one with all the team who was involved?
Where were your setups?
You know, what were the communications like?
Were they in place? Because the thing is, is they need to be designated.
They can't be part of the production staff.
Those are two separate entities and they need to be treated as such.
There's one that needs to focus just on safety and one that does everything else.
So that way the production team has nothing to they just go, hey,
we're all on the same page and done, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Because I know, you know, when I with lifeguard,
when you see someone in trouble, you know, you almost have to be careful
not to lock in on them. You want to still be scanning.
But you're obviously concerned about that person.
And then I think about as an athlete, when I've done
has there been occasions where I've done a workout at a pool
when you realize that, yeah, when you're and I'm not even a great swimmer
as far as long distances, you know, I swam to lifeguard, to be honest.
I was never a competitive swimmer.
But I was, you know, when you were swimming and only swimming,
you get into that cadence, you try and be efficient, you know,
and then you're sprinting, obviously, if you're getting close to someone.
But apart from that, you know, you you should be leaving somewhat fresh
and then you make the rescue doing it, you know, a workout or possibly one
or two days full of workouts prior to that is a completely different animal.
So you've got that other factor of that.
Well, don't touch them, because if you touch them, then you're going to disqualify them.
You know, there's all these factors now that a person may think that they're strong,
but then they find themselves fatigued at the end of a race
where maybe they went too hard and now they're in trouble.
Or like you said, it was a seizure or a cardiac event or something else.
Yeah, you never know.
And the one thing is, though, is in those those high intensity
type of workouts that are crossfit based,
I personally think they should know that there should have been like a one to eight
ratio trailing that group coming in because, you know,
it doesn't take more than 45 seconds for someone to go underwater.
You know what I mean?
So it's like you need to be on proximity or you're going to be,
especially in the lake or river.
Like it's good luck finding the body if they go under.
You know what I mean?
So it's like it's it's there's got to be stopgaps put in place for that regardless.
And I'm not and I'm not picking on them.
And it's a tragedy.
They didn't want this to happen.
Obviously, not like they sound like they woke up to run this wonderful event
and they thought, oh, today's the day we're going to lose one of our competitors.
That's that's not the case.
It's just when you add water into the element of sport,
you know, like example, the Olympics, right?
The most dangerous elements water could possibly be at Chopu.
And they had an extremely good team, the Tahitian Water Patrol.
I've trained with the Hawaiian Water Patrol for decades.
They're pioneers, best people on the planet to do that job.
And look, everyone came home safe.
And that's in a place where people die like they can die.
They're pipeline Chopu. People can die.
So there's ways to do it.
And we know how to do it.
It's not like the concept has been proven.
It's just that the generic public that are outside of like the surf life
saving space, they don't really give a credence.
And I ran into it, too.
They don't want to pay.
They don't want to add to it.
They think it's nothing.
You know what? They just kind of lackadaisically think.
And then we lose somebody and, you know, you lose your reputation.
Use your brand.
Worst thing is you lose, obviously, the patient.
I can't reiterate that enough.
But, you know, you're cutting your nose off to spite your face,
not doing this the right way.
It's not it's not the way.
Absolutely. Well, I mean, again, perfect examples from our collective
professions is look at Valdi, you know, this is when you don't take it seriously.
We're not proactive when you're not training, you're not communicating
with your agencies around you.
It will happen in the last place I worked at.
If they don't figure out their shit, the same thing is going to happen there.
And that's one of the things that are so frustrating.
And we almost had the pulse shooting where I used to work, which is Disney Springs.
That's where he went first.
And by a miracle, there was so many police officers there that day.
He got back in his car and not a miracle for the poor people in the pulse nightclub.
Yeah, I was just there.
I look at it, too, because I write EAPs and stand in place and shelter in place
protocols for big resorts and like aquatic properties, mainly.
But yeah.
And then you think about it just on the medical side, like you think of like
Demar Hanlon, they had a huge team around him, cardiac arrest, saved.
And then there's a case that they talk about with their child or sporting event
in Newark, New Jersey, had a heart attack and they thought he was just having like
a seizure and they didn't react to it or he just passed out from dehydration.
They didn't know. And he just died on the vine right in front of everybody.
So it's like, you know what I mean?
When you invite someone to a public space to compete, bigger, small event,
there should be something involved in a professional level that takes care of that.
Or at least the people that are there, the trainers, they should be trained
in CPR to be able to recognize that because a lot of it's just basic, you know,
interventions that could save it.
All they really needed to stop that across.
There was a guy on a board going, hey, hold on to my board.
Are you done? No, I can keep going.
OK, I'm going to trail you. Good. Yeah, keep traveling.
I'm not good anymore. Hold on to the board.
That's it. No loss of life.
It wasn't it wasn't very technical.
It really was. And sadly, so. Yeah.
Well, invisibility is a big thing.
I work for years in Long Lake, New York, on a summer camp there for six summers.
And the moment the first person jumped in, all the silt from the bottom.
I mean, literally, you know, as soon as they break the surface, they're gone.
Yeah. And it was terrifying.
We had the whole buddy system that summer camps have.
And occasionally a kid would go missing.
You'd be doing your search pattern, dredging the floor, you know,
waiting to find a dead child, and then they come out of the wood workshop.
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot my tag. OK, good.
You know, but I mean, having been there, it is it's absolutely terrifying.
And, you know, if you're used to lifeguarding in pools
and now you get employed to do, you know, a lake lifeguard,
you can't rely on being able to see the bottom.
So even that's another, you know, was that someone had worked on lakes
before and they underestimated the environment?
Yeah, I had to do. I think I told you I consult and I like and I train
lifeguarding for some of the camps up in Pennsylvania.
And it's a totally different element.
But when you think we got all those floating docks, a kid does a backflip
and gets knocked out and then he disappears.
And there's a and you know, there's a bit of a current that moves one way.
It's like it's it's a wholly different type of line search.
And it is even in the ocean, like, you know, a gradual like,
you know, like the continental shelf of Florida.
You could do like a walking search if you needed to, you know, in New Jersey,
you can do the same thing.
And even in Hawaii, there's ways to do it like in a lake could be 20 feet deep
in the middle. You know what I mean?
It's you don't know.
And it's weird because you think a lake is safe, but it's not.
I think I was telling you before New Jersey itself has more drownings,
even though the beach is a problem right now, lakes and rivers
with the Delaware water gap.
So it really is like, oh, we're having an event in the lake.
That doesn't mean it's safe.
It does not mean it's safe at all.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, another hazard that we seem to hear a lot about recently
is shark attacks as well.
And I know that was an event that took one of your friends lives in Hawaii.
So let's talk about that through your eyes.
Yeah, so that one's very fresh and very sad.
I do have like like he's a man of faith to my always one of my best friends.
He's all of our best friends.
That was the odd thing about to my is that if you talk to almost anyone
that knew him for any amount of time regularly,
I got to my best friends.
And it's because he treated everyone like family and he was just a very good human.
This is a hard one.
And I talked to his wife as a good friend of mine, too, is
and I just firstly, just to give that reverence and respect,
like losing someone that they were so close and they're such they're like one thing.
Like they were just like an entity in itself.
So then I just want to like just really it's just a great person,
great relationship, just great, great couple.
But with Tamayo, he was one of those guys, he wasn't going to stop doing
what he was doing, regardless of age and circumstances.
He was still going to be surfing pipeline until he's 60 or whatever.
Maybe it would have something would need to stop him from what he was doing.
And I'm not saying that it's serendipitous or it just happens,
but I don't think he would have changed his ways to avoid that.
He's going to live his life and things happen.
And that's that's the surfer versus the lifeguard, right?
The lifeguard is a risk technician because we're handling other people's lives.
The surfer knows that this is our passion or our lifestyle.
And not to be trite, but if we're so lucky to die doing what we love
versus getting hit by a bus or dying of a mundane medical condition
that we're all going to run into, it sucks.
But it ain't the worst.
It's still a tragedy that kind of like immortalizes
one of the best humans I ever known.
So I do will forever miss him.
And so we meet again, as we say, like a hui hou in Hawaii.
But he went out doing what he loved at his home break.
And it's like it sucks, but it is what it is.
He was an on-duty lifeguard.
And there's a thing about that that people don't really know
what it leads into the other side of thing with that Bill 41 that's coming out.
So I'm not sure if you heard of the Ben Carlson Foundation,
where Ben Carlson was on a rescue.
And we think we don't know because it's hard to tell,
but we think he got kicked by the patient underwater
because he was a heck of a waterman as well.
Is that the Huntington Beach lifeguard?
Newport, Newport.
Newport, Newport, yeah, they're right.
They're like right next to each other.
And great, he surfed biggest waves too.
He's a great, he wasn't a professional surfer,
but he was for not being a paid surfer, he was as good as anybody else.
And he was a great lifeguard.
Things happen.
We call it the button.
You get knocked out in UFC.
You're on land smelling salts, check your sea spine, you're good to go.
Manage your concussion.
You get knocked out in the water, gone zones.
It's a, unless you have an instant response and there's no current,
you're probably a goner.
And that's what happened to Ben.
With Tamayo, we don't know because it was unwitnessed,
but to my knowledge, he really just jumped in the water to rinse off,
not even to surf, and it was gone like that.
It just wasn't witnessed.
Someone found him within minutes after,
but we all know how quick it is to bleed out.
He lost his arm and he had a bite on his leg.
So it was like two quick hits.
So he could have jumped off a rock into the shark, you know, from the depths.
And it came up and just hit him thinking it was a seal or a turtle.
It just happened.
And unless you have a tourniquet on you, like, and even if so, can you get it on your side?
It's just, it's, it's the circumstance, time and circumstances.
But lifeguards are not treated like other first responders.
They don't have the same recognition as a designated lifeguard.
And that, that bill is going to be introduced to Congress
to have the same protections federally as a open water lifeguard
that a firefighter or PD or any of the other ones do.
I'm really big now that I'm not behind the lines
because I'm not an active lifeguard in any agency.
I'm fighting for that, for the people that are to come,
because a lot of things come with that,
whether it's recognition by the state, whether it's pensions,
whether it's like things that, you know, dictate just standard protections.
I think lifeguards need that because it's just, it's obviously seen as a dangerous job.
You know, it's, it's actually odd that there's less, that there's not,
I'm sorry, that there's not more on duty deaths.
We're just very talented group of watermen that are operating at a very high level
that know how to protect themselves.
But if you, you took that element out and you added like a commonplace person to do that job,
it would be tragedy over and over because most people can't get out of the water.
They can't get themselves out of the situations that we've had to put ourselves in,
let alone you on a multi-person rescue or a single person rescue at a high-serve.
It's difficult.
So yeah, I just, I hope that goes through.
I know Fox with their, I think it's called High-Serve Rescue is the show.
They're using that as a catalyst to promote that bill.
So people are aware and will sign on to petitions and get it moved forward,
which is very nice of them to just kind of back the lifeguards nationwide
and just worldwide really like legitimize the profession.
It's on par and recognize for what they're doing.
And I hope Tamayo and I hope Ben Carlson's life are not in vain.
And there's been others that have died on duty too, like Brandt Vito who had a,
who had a cardiac arrest.
And this is just the reality.
I never was able to speak on this before because I was with the agency,
but he didn't have insurance because they wouldn't give lifeguards insurance that were part-time.
And he was working full-time, you know, 40 hours, but under a part-time.
And then back in the nineties, he died and, you know, he was having palpitations
and he didn't get checked out.
And it was a huge issue.
They fixed that since then, but there's just been a lot of times where we've been bastardized
as an agency in a profession where it's led to deaths and I'm just tired of it.
So now that I'm not, and I can speak, you know,
maybe I'll piss off a few people here and there, but some things need to be said, you know.
A hundred percent.
Well, it's so weird as well.
Firstly, you know, when you look at lifeguards,
yeah, there's, there's a huge amount of volunteerism, but also, you know,
we talked about this in the first conversation.
I use you guys as an example, a lot on the requirements of fitness,
because in police and fire, more often than not, we're held to a standard in the academy.
And that's it for the rest of your career, which is fucking insane.
Whereas even as a pool slash Lake lifeguard, if I didn't pass all my tests, yeah, my quals,
then I'm not a lifeguard anymore.
I don't have to serve anymore.
So, you know, so that, you know, puts us absolutely shoulder to shoulder.
I mean, I have a huge amount of respect for Ocean Lifeguard because I didn't,
I didn't lifeguard an ocean and, you know, pools.
Cause aren't it not just to do the Red Cross or, you know what I mean?
I personally think accountability in any first response, but that's just my mentality is,
I think it shouldn't just be us.
I think we all should be held to a standard.
You know, you have to make accommodations maybe throughout the career for what level you're at,
whether you're a lieutenant, if you're a desk jockey, if you've moved into different
admin positions, yes, there should be exemptions.
But if you're an active field officer as a PD or a firefighter,
your job is intense.
Ocean Lifeguarding is extremely intense.
We kind of need those standards.
It does put a strain on the guys.
Like I'm 42 and I can, I've kept that, you know, I've kept that idle high on my engine.
So I can, I, my goal is even though I'm not active to be able to do that test every year
and keep it within a, you know, 10% range of when I started
until I would have retired at 56, just because it's my own mentality.
But I know everyone doesn't have that, but I think it should be.
I think it really should be because you're signing up for something that involves other
people's lives and it's a disrespect to the profession.
If you just get a sandbag and let, you know, just let it fly by the night,
see if it's just going to work out.
You know, I don't think that's good.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
There's a thing I do every year called the 343 Hero Challenge
run by some of my friends in Orange County.
Amazing competition, but they have a master's division, which I think is 40 and above.
And I've never, I've always partnered up with one of the younger firefighters because
exactly what you said, that's great that there's that division, but I'm a firefighter.
And so I hold myself accountable to be able to do what the 20 and 30 year olds can do.
It's not a, you know, showing off.
It's just, well, you know, if I'm going to sit here behind a microphone and preach fitness
and, you know, responsibility and ownership, then I need a bloody walk as well.
There's two things from that.
One, I want to pick your brain on the 343 because I'm doing a professional lifeguard
tournament through the nonprofit to raise money, but also give professionals prize money
with the Waterman's Challenge.
We did a demo this year and it worked out really good.
We're changing it.
The aspect of lifeguard competitions from like dory boats, which is cool
to just run swim runs.
I want to make it a progression based race.
So run, swim, paddle, C-spine package, run, swim, run, CPR all the way to BVM to packaging.
Jet ski time trials through a course with a human pickup efficiently.
If you injure them during the process or would have by the judges saying, hey, that was a fail,
then you can't pass.
You have to go fast, but you have to be accurate.
So it's not just the physicality because lifeguarding is very physical, but it's like they say is like
slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
You have to do things accurately in lifeguarding to have success for the patient to get on the
beach safely without further injury of their back neck, medical, bleeding control, C-spining,
packaging.
The whole nine has to be done within that physical element as well.
And I want to showcase that because then people have an actual idea of what we do.
If you can showcase that as like a professional event showing what actually happens when we
have to put it all on the line and we don't have a pause button because you don't, you
start a rescue.
There's no like, let's stop here and wait.
It doesn't work like that.
The wave hits you when the wave hits you, the accident happens.
It's all linear.
So that's one thing.
I have had captains too that even though they're not required to do the test, they do the runs
from every year just to show unity.
And I appreciate that because if I was still in lifeguarding and I ended up getting to
that position of a position of chief or a captain anywhere, I would still do it because
I think if you can't at least show camaraderie and attempt to show that you can do it, then
it's a good attempt to be a part of your force and like it's not good leadership.
So I appreciate when I see things happen like that.
Absolutely.
Well, talking again about the professional side, this is one thing that's been really
strange to me.
And ironically, where you are now, this is where it's rife, is the volunteer fire service
in super densely populated suburban areas in the Northeast.
And this is this kind of deviation from the hierarchy of needs.
Safety and security is the absolute first level.
So whether it's your beaches or your streets, to rely on volunteerism and volunteerism is
admirable.
It's great.
It's super admirable.
Yeah.
But yeah, I agree.
So where I live, it's super prevalent.
And I want to be very eggshell-y with this because I don't want to ever offend because
I'm an EMT volunteer in my town like if they need me, but they also have a professional
service.
They pick up the backup calls like say if there's three things going on once, great.
You get a page, you get a call.
Fire, they have 12-hour services.
They cut off at 6 p.m. here.
And I very strangely go like, well, wouldn't most fires happen around dinnertime when the
fires are going on in the house or when they don't happen, like fires happen when they
happen.
But it's no fault of their own.
It's just one of those things.
There's a transition.
Now, the culture of volunteer firefighting is amazing.
It's cool that people want to do that.
But the reality is that the economics of it these days is people in these areas, they've
gotten way more expensive to live.
So they can't just drop their job and go on a call or there's less attraction to being
a volunteer because they have to work the job that requires the money to live in these
densely populated expensive shore towns.
And they're still running off volunteer service, which I think there should always be volunteer
service, but they should also have a line of professionalism to man the firehouses throughout
no matter what.
And then the backup staff will rotate.
And that's a good way to get them in to kind of cultivate the next class of professionals
is maybe do five years of volunteer and back up the crew and then go from there.
That could be a good way to transition.
But it's like anything small town, big town oversight.
They don't like the state fights at the town.
The town fights at the state.
And then at the end of the day, the only thing that really gets the short end of the stick
is the house that burns down.
You know what I mean?
Because there wasn't any volunteers available for that call or something like that.
So it's a hard one.
I wish everyone the best on that.
I've got fire extinguishers all over my house for that reason because you never know.
Hopefully they come, but who knows?
Yeah. But I think priority, there's a lot of departments that are running a lot of calls
that are volunteers that should just be made professional.
I mean, there's no question if you're in a density populated high tax area and then you
haven't allocated funds for a fire service, then you should.
And I think it's the same with the lifeguarding community.
And of course, there are exceptions to all these rules.
If you're in a rural place where a population of 250, I get the volunteer fire service completely.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
I already did in New Jersey because these towns were short towns and they're one square
mile or two square miles and there's maybe 500 people.
But now it's not like that.
It's like sprawling.
There's 150,000 people living in the area.
It's different.
Things change.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of Ben, I went to have breakfast with one of my friends in Newport Beach and
there's a statue of him on the beach there.
But again, I think a lot of those were volunteers as well.
And so when you think about such an affluent, density populated area as Newport and Huntington
and further out, there should be professionally paid lifeguards.
And again, if someone assaults a lifeguard, they should have the same penalty if they
assault a firefighter or a car.
Yeah.
I think in Hawaii, we were able to get that because sadly, everything happens to the beach
in Hawaii.
So the good and the bad.
So you're going to get the local meth head freaking out and that's going to happen
at the beach.
You're going to have to.
So the assault thing, we did get protection, I think about like eight years ago.
When it comes to Newport and California, they do a pretty good job of cultivating summertime
and full-time hires.
You have to do a few seasons because they get paid pretty well in California.
They're the litmus.
LA, Newport, Orange County, you could make 100 grand as a lifeguard, even maybe not even
as a lieutenant.
But it's hard to get that position.
There's a lot of low-paid $16 an hour summer hires that do a lot of the heavy lifting.
In New Jersey, they're 99% summer hires with a couple of admin staff.
The difference in California and Hawaii is that there's a lot of regulation on training
and their SOPs like in Huntington and Newport are just like – and LA too, just great.
And I will say, Honolulu has come a long way in the last five years about really getting
professional because we have the best watermen, but sometimes we just didn't have the asset
that's to the back end.
Now, we're getting there.
And I very, very appreciate to see all the hard work that went into that.
New Jersey, because local government, it's town by town and they do a good job and the
lifeguards as a whole really mean well.
The problem is that the standardization of one lifeguard agency for another isn't there.
So there's no state regulation like you'd have a fire oversight, come down, commissioner
and go look at the firehouse and check everything and check the hoses and do everything or give
like check your EAPs and everything.
There isn't that.
The way it works is that you submit your member of the national board, which is USLA, but
they're not a training organization.
They're just an organization for lifeguarding for the US.
They do a great job.
They run amazing tournaments.
They have a good manual, but that manual applies as a general overview.
It's not how you do things in your specific area.
I'd like to see New Jersey because the coastline of New Jersey essentially and a lot like Florida,
it's the same coastline for 60 miles.
So the only thing dividing it is a tax map key and maybe a jetty, if that.
So the beach is the beach.
The way to do, you know, the winds are north, the currents are going this way.
The winds are south, the currents are going that way.
There's a jetty here.
There's an entry point.
It's very similar, but you'll see a beach down south running a different rescue module
and not using rescue boards.
And you'll see a surf community that's really good with surfboards running a, you know,
like a rescue board protocol and a jet ski.
And then you won't have a jet ski in this town, but it's the same rip current.
It's the same people.
It's the same tourists.
It's the same type of locals.
And the problem with that is one is the standard is in equal parts because yeah,
maybe they have a different talent pool.
Some of these agencies have like as good as lifeguards I've ever seen.
Some of them are getting, you know, inland and other places because they're just trying
to put it together.
And I think they did a really good job.
They started a lifeguard academy.
Seager in New Jersey, one of the more forward thinking agencies, they started this initiative
to start a lifeguard academy and it's a really good start.
So I'm very proud of them.
Tim Harmon is actually the chief there and his brother.
They, the whole staff does a really good job.
They were very forward thinking.
They did a jet ski course with the big wave assessment group and us this year.
And I got to guest train and some cool things are happening.
I do think and personally, and this is what I think is that, that academy should be for
the whole state and there should be all the way through.
And I think that the emergency action plans, SOPs and protocols should be standardized.
And there's two reasons for that.
One is patient care.
So that way the beach is the beach in New Jersey.
We all know what we're up against.
And then secondly, liability because limited liability for the lifeguard.
If they have a training standard and then something goes south because heavy surf
conditions or something goes wrong, as long as it's not gross negligence, they would be
protected because they followed a protocol that is transparent across the board and works.
It's not like we do a line pole here and we use Dory boats here or we use rescue boards in this
and we use jet skis here.
It's, this is your situation you need to have as your minimum standards.
And if you don't have this, there should be state funds that go fund your jet ski program
and we'll send a team down to do that or send you up to the academy to run through that.
Because when it really comes down to it is if a guy gets rescued up in Monmouth County
by a jet ski, jet ski on a boating accident or some other type of multi-person rescue.
And then the same thing happens say in, you know, Wildwood, New Jersey, and they don't
have a jet ski program, not picking on you Wildwood.
I'm just, just making an assumption that you may or may not just any town
farther away doesn't have it. Well, the patient is the one who suffers and you're going to be on
the hook, you know, and you're actually going to be on the hook because there was nothing
iterated of like, well, they do this up here and it worked and you did this down there and
it didn't work. So obviously you're negligible. So that's why it's, it's, it's a win-win for both
sides. It's a win-win for the agencies. It's a win-win for the patient care. And there's,
and I don't see any downsides to it. So I'm really pushing for it.
What about recruitment, police, fire, EMS? We're all struggling in a lot. And you know, this,
there's many things I talk about as far as fixing the things that are deterring young applicants to
get them testing for us again, lining up out the door and then retaining a lot of the people that
are experienced that are retiring early because of the working conditions. What are you seeing in the
lifeguarding community? New Jersey is a bit different because I would say the lion's share
of the vets come from the teaching profession because they end right after Memorial Day and
they can jump on the beach and they've got really good experience and they're solid watermen. They've
been doing it since they've been 16, but to fill in the gaps. And then when the college kids goes
back, they all go to skeleton crews. So that's when we get the surf. Like this last week was like
eight foot surf for four days, a really good hurricane swell. I don't know if you saw that
storm and they're half sapped or less. So there's just towers dropping and stands dropping. And it's
like, you don't need red flags so much at the beach. Things are going to get, it's just the way it
goes. And I have a whole thing with that too, is that like red flagging a beach where you're
paying high taxes and beach badges is, you know, like maybe the state should fund some professionals
to do this year round so they can cover that. So they're not just a four month salary. So that
way they actually have, just like California does, you have seasonals and you have full timers and
the full timers run that beach and they respond to rescues in the middle of winter. It doesn't matter.
They're ready to go. You know what I mean? That's where I want to come with that. But
they just, in general, what I think has happened is that lifeguarding used to be like a rite of
passage in the Northeast. Whereas if you were surf adjacent, a swimmer, a lifeguard, a firefighter,
or any of the, or you wanted to go to those things, or if you were, you know, just like a college
athlete and you wanted to stay fit, you became a lifeguard. And everyone did a season or two
lifeguarding. People are finding other jobs or not working anymore in these areas, the young kids.
So that's the hard part is finding the seasonals. There is good ones and there's a lot of them that
are putting out there, but you need thousands of lifeguards here. Like we have 300 in Hawaii.
You need probably 5,000 lifeguards from Cape May to Sandy Hook. I think maybe more actually,
you might just run rotational bases. So there's got to be fostering programs. And that's what
Never Off Duty was essentially is to fix that lifeguard shortage in like an incubator, get them
into the water park, get them a base, get them trained up to do the beach, stage it up, let them
run through their college career. And then maybe they work during the summer on weekends, or they
work if they're teachers through the whole summer. So there's ways to do it, but you need a lot of
public awareness that it is a gap and you really need to like get these kids back into the cultural
aspect of being a lifeguard from, you know, Maine all the way down to Delaware. Like that was a
thing. I know for a fact, because we're all kind of living in the same beach towns. And it's just,
there's less of that. So I'm hoping that we can kind of start promoting it again. And there's
some hype to it again. Will you talk about Never Off Duty before, give us an overview again, and
then what's been the progress the last few years? Yeah, so Hawaii is going great. I have my board in
Hawaii. They've done awesome things. We've got a thousand people through the program over the last
almost six years since we started in 2017. Base level American Red Cross, pool and waterfront
lifeguarding, starting them in jobs, then moving into the Never Off Duty open water program to get
them ready for ocean safety tryouts. So now they do both. Now that we have the curriculum up and
running, we wrote that curriculum actually for the state department because we were going to do
sports envoys as an economic driver in different international coastal communities that have beach
towns that don't have lifeguarding, like creating a lifeguard agency for those hotel areas. So that
way it's an economic driver for safe beaches for those like say Indonesia, Sri Lanka. That's where
I wrote that program for, but now I've adapted it so that way people can use it as a general
program. And we put all our kids through it. So that way they're ready to go on the beach and
there's some type of standardization. We started Chapter in New Jersey with the Watermen's Ball
this year. Went great. Most of the money is going to go to education, elementary school education,
water safety. We have that Barefoot Brigade book. So we're going to print another 10,000 copies,
hopefully more, do another 15 schools and then kind of build it from there and get funding.
And then we're going to hire a grant writer for this region because it has to be state by state.
And we can't commingle funds. So like I can't pull from Hawaii to start New Jersey. So I had to do
the same thing as I did in Hawaii, as whereas I put in my own capital, people see the value in it.
We get chairs and we get people involved just as a regular nonprofit and they fundraise and then
we can go on from there and start working the ways to keep revenue coming into it and revenue
going out of it to create the programs and facilitate the program. So it's a little bit
easier this time because it was like a two-year gap for me starting it in Hawaii. It's any type
of success because it was my own bootstrapping. And at that time in Hawaii, Jersey Mikes oddly
got involved and they did a month of giving and got us through the next hurdle. Whereas here,
we did a Waterman's Ball and that lifeguard tournaments fundraising went good and we started
off with a $24,000 raise. Luke Shepperton gave me a signed board from his quiver. He was the
Eddie Icao winner and that went to 13,000, went for $13,000 which is going to cover a lot of the
books and the staffers to go to these schools and teach the water safety right before summertime
in spring. So we're getting there for sure. We've got a lot of lofty goals but we're getting there.
Brilliant. Well, talk to me about the education you're doing in our schools and obviously here
in Florida, there are a huge amount of pools. A lot of our first responders go to numerous
drownings and it's definitely one of the most traumatic events that we respond to. So what do
you suggest as far as a new parent and we're talking about the infants and then let's talk about,
if not that, then what about elementary school? Yeah, so elementary I think is the first place
they can conceptualize. So obviously if you have a child, like I taught my kid to swim because I'm
a lifeguard so I did it myself but not everybody has those resources. So some people don't even
have access to pools to teach swim lessons. That was one of the things is we wanted to have funds
to rent out pools in the winter time for free swim lessons. So that's a base layer. In the elementary
schools, we wanted to give visual examples with the book and then teaching what a riptide is,
teaching what buddy swimming is, teaching how to check in with the lifeguard, why you would,
all the things that as lifeguards we teach our kids but you move 10 minutes west of where I am
and that might not even be a thought. They're either rural or they're in urban and both of those
have the same issue where they're just not coastal but then they come to the coast in the summer and
they all do or they go to the water park in the summer and it's education. So sometimes if the
parent doesn't have the knowledge, they don't pass it on. We want to be that stopgap so that stops.
And then when we teach the kid, when they have kids, they're going to teach the same lessons
and that's a base. And then they might not become lifeguards later but maybe one out of 100 do.
And if we say we extrapolate that out and we get through 200,000 kids in New Jersey and you get
20,000 lifeguards off that over, you know what I mean? It's all a numbers game but with prevention
because education is prevention, then two, we can facilitate and incubate the jobs training from
there. So we have a system on how to do it. We just needed some ammo and some fuel to get behind
it to implement it and start to get there for sure. I was very lucky. The junior school I went to in
England, every Wednesday we would go swimming. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, it was amazing and
I think I started there at three years old. So I can't remember if we went that early. I'm not sure
but certainly that's my entire memory. Then as you get older, you start working for your 25 meter
badge, your 50 meter badge and you're working towards a mile. It's great. Yeah, phenomenal
program. And then you're doing the whole get your pajamas, tie the legs together. Yeah, I had a
swim survival. Yeah, exactly. So again, when we talk about environment, I always say this when
we talk about my health and fitness. I grew up on a farm in England. A lot of the environment set me
up for success in that. And I think it's the same if you're if you buy an ocean or you have access
to a pool, you know, there's a high chance that you're going to get more exposure to be able to
swim. Exactly. That being said, prior to any sort of schooling at all, obviously there are those
programs where we see these little infants being flung into a pool and they go on their back and
they kick their way out, which I didn't I couldn't swim at that age. Yeah, talk to me about that
element. It's not up to the child, of course, we're now we're talking to the parents. But
what is the efficacy and the importance of doing it that young? Yeah, so I think it is because pool
pool drownings just irk me it stinks, but it happens. I know people that I know actually
know personal people that have lost children that way and their water people because the pool doesn't
have the scary element of the ocean. The ocean kind of keeps kids at bay at certain times. But
a pool you can run into someone's backyard at a birthday party and just drown. And I actually know
someone that saved his own child just doing a scan and noticed something at the bottom of the pool
and ended up being his kid and he resuscitated him. Luckily he had the lifeguard eye, but we're not
excluded from that as lifeguard. It can happen to any parent, especially just young children. And
it's a tragedy regardless. Something that I hate to see is that like in the oranges and and like
this, you know, the outside surrounding parts of Newark and different urban areas,
some of the pools have been shut down from basic needs of like, say, pumping fixed or like the
funding for chlorine and then they shut the whole pool down for a whole summer. That's a whole
generation that lost their swimming ability that could have had programs. So I would love to get
this to the point where we go, hey, what's your need? Okay, so, you know, the private element
isn't working. How can we publicly fund that and grant you the 10 grand to fix your pool pumps or
to hire your guards or to hire WSI swim lessons? Like, let's figure that out because that's downstream
going to someone's going to drown because of that situation. So and another thing is foresight of the
parent, if the parent's not a swimmer, regardless of your social economic is not a swimmer,
you might not even think about it because it's not on your radar, we're going to go to the baseball
field, we're going to go but then your kid goes to a birthday party, or he ends up at the beach for
the first time on a field trip and something goes wrong, whatever it may be, those situations come
up all the time. We're trying to like get as much awareness to the need, then fix it with the
education and then from there foster that education and turn it into actually skills.
So that's we got to start from the base. I was like, oh, let's get it right on life. Getting
someone to a high center of life guard will take a long time, but preventing a drowning is actually
pretty simple. So we were kind of like, let's scale it back and start where, hey, you need a swimsuit,
let's get you a swimsuit. You need to find a free swimming and, you know, water safety course. Let's
get you into one. Let's find you funding for that, you know. So that's where we actually brought the
programming down to a very base level. I think that's going to like actually scale the whole
program up. Absolutely. Well, before we hit record, you were showing me a bag. So let's go back to
sharks first, because obviously that's, you know, the bleeding control on the beach.
What is your community seeing about the prevalence of shark attacks? Because sometimes it gets skewed
when something makes the news and all of a sudden, you know, they're reporting everything and maybe
it was going on the whole time. What are you actually seeing though as far as stats first?
And then let's talk about the equipment that our lifeguards need to be carrying. Sure. So a
prevalent shark population shows the health of the ocean. So it's not a negative thing.
A friend just got chased out two days ago in Asbury Park from a shark. I don't know if you've seen in
New Jersey, but the whales have come back, the rays have come back, the dolphins have come back.
The nature in New Jersey is actually pretty wonderful. You know, they had the stigma in the
80s of the needles and the red tie and all this stuff. It's gone. They've done a very good job
of management here and we're getting like some of the cool stuff I've seen in Hawaii I'm seeing
here, like, which is pretty cool. But with that nature is nature and it is what it is. So shark
attacks, you know, very unlikely, but they do happen. I think just as prevalent is surf and
water safety accidents. So we had a friend in Indonesia that died of a bleeding control incident.
His fin caught his femoral artery and he bled out very quickly. There was nothing to do because
transport was six hours and the mental eyes and things of that nature. You know, not even big
surf world-class surfer, McCalla Jones passes away, you know, very tragically from a bleeding
control situation that may be on the mainland here in Hawaii could have been aided there,
it couldn't, but that can happen here too. So I do produce these kits. I give them as presents
to people. I've done it for years. I did it as like a side project to bring in revenue. Maybe
we'll sell a kit and like a Tom shoe, you know, buy one, give one, but I just started giving them
out. I had extra funds and you know, I put them together and then this company called StatPak,
I've been working with them for like three years on and off, just trying to like develop products.
They gave me a few kits for myself when I was an EMT and just doing my own stuff. They just kind
of supported me. Just cool guys, like really cool company. They come from the backpack world and I
made a hip pack that this is the first iteration so that way people could keep it on as lifeguards
or keep it in your car, throw it in a travel bag, which is a very useful go-to. And just to
kind of answer your question though, are sharks being more prevalent? Yeah, that's a fact because
I did an article on it once for Vice Sports, the bro science of shark attacks and surfing,
and you can look it up and I went through the numbers and it is increasing. It just is,
that can be population density, that could be usage of the surf. But if you look at like Cape
Cod, like the seal population and the documentary, yeah, the sharks are back and that's a good thing,
but people plus hazards equal risk and the hazards, the shark and the people are there,
it's going to happen. So in New Smyrna, Florida, you get bumped every day. So it just all depends
on where you are surfing and that kind of thing. This is the kit that we were talking about before.
This is the first iteration. It probably won't be the last. We're going to do a couple more tweaks
to it, but it's basically, it's got the Velcro so you can rip off a tourniquet. I just have my pen
right there for concussions and stuff. This has got a pouch here, so like Israeli bandage, all your
gauze, your gloves, all your go-to stuff. Maybe an OPA, something of that nature. You can stack
right here so your OPAs, your orophlegic airways and just like your adjuncts can be in the front,
quick stuff that you need like on the fly. I throw like for travel, I'll throw like a ClosX
because I just actually hurt my knee the other week surfing where I just tore it open on a rock.
So instead of, that's just me, not I would recommend anyone else doing this, but I closed it up so I
didn't have to get sutured. I just did it myself and just ran a bead of a quick clot and a ClosX
and stitched it up myself so I could surf again the next swell. But just something that you could
throw in your bag and go travel in Nicaragua or you could just have in your car for a car accident
and also wear as a hip pack as a lifeguard, like an interchangeable fanny pack that's like an
everyday carry. StatPak looks to release that this fall into next spring and they're going to give
five percent of sale to the Never Off Duty Foundation for that water safety program. So
it's pretty cool that they got involved that way and they actually already sell to a lot of
the agencies as well so it's a good thing for us. Brilliant. One more question before we go to the
closing questions. I was actually, I had an amazing experience. I was with my son
a few weeks ago and I was at Crescent Beach which is south of St. Augustine, my favorite
beach on the planet. It's gorgeous and there was a pod of dolphin and they were just around me and
you know so I was out there. Hardly anyone sat in the water. I was a little bit deeper because I
liked to body surf and just standing in awe as these beautiful creatures go around which was
amazing. My sister is an editor and she works a lot with the the wildlife and David Attenborough
and does all that TV for the BBC and she was like oh you know they could have been protecting you
from sharks. Yeah. Oh okay so maybe if I'd seen behind the dolphin I would have fucking run
my ass out. But that being said though, I mean yeah again I just I think nature is amazing and
you know it is what it is if that happens. I wouldn't enjoy it. The closing teams, the sharks
versus the dolphins. Exactly. They're the dolphins do a good job of like they've actually like,
because the sharks will try to attack the babies right so they're used to just going head to you
know like head to head and just straight they'll just nail them in the guts you know what I mean
and just try to take them out when they see them. But they also like they're pretty cool people.
That's why I get really frustrated when I see like like blackfish and all the stuff that you see like
the you know the culling of dolphins for food. I'm like those guys are like cool with us. We
should be nicer to them. They like us. Yeah be a little kinder. They're smart you know.
Well with the the profile of a human in the water, are there any whether it's kind of
folklore in Hawaii or maybe some of the science stuff, what kind of human beings swimming in the
ocean do to minimize the chance of being confused for prey? Because I mean clearly if you are a
surfer and you're paddling on a wave looking up you know that that seems like it might have the
same kind of silhouette as a seal. So that you know is going to be a higher target. But for your
average swimmer you know what are some of the the things that are told in Hawaii to kind of maybe
try and help reduce that risk? I did just see because I'm still on group chats with all my
lifeguard buddies. Shark bands donated bands to the guards on the north shore anyway that is you
know just nicely gave to him. I think they work. I don't know because I don't know. I know it's a
frequency but it seems like it does. So I'm looking to that if that's a concern something to do. I'm
not endorsed by them. I don't know the validity but that was really sweet of them to reach out
and you know to keep us keep us another element of safety. I would say strength in numbers. The one
thing I noticed I have my friend Colin Cook. He got bit and he was my neighbor and his leg was
taken off at you know the north shore right near our house. And he luckily was saved by another
friend. He only boarded up that uses surf leashes as a makeshift tourniquet so he could get you know
out of the water. It was a crazy rescue. Never you know never heard anything like that really.
It was just such a wild scenario where the shark actually kept chasing him. Seasonally we get these
adolescent shark sharks in Hawaii that will follow their migratory pattern and usually find lakes
and rivers. Not lakes and rivers but just rivers. They follow. They feed off rivers because the
outflow. So where he got bit was near an old river. So sometimes it's not best to surf near rivers
because of that fact because they know where the fish come out right. You know like that's
that's usually the brackish water is a good place to hunt. One thing and I've heard from multiple
different people that study them is that movement is good. So if you're surfing sitting on your board
for long periods of time even though it's fun and nice to relax it shows that you're like dead weight
and you're an easy target. So sometimes when there's no movement and you look like a turtle hanging
over your board you're you're you could be an already dead animal that they just want to like
a dead whale they go after a dead turtle. So they'll check bite that just to see what it is. And when
they find out it's not used most of the time they'll just go but you've already had the life
altering bite depending on the size if it's a bull shark or tiger or white you know what I mean.
It's the damage that's been done. So I like me personally I just stay active in the water. I'm
never I'm never not. I would never like say that it's it's it's hard not to surf alone because us
as surfers we're trying to avoid crowds but it's good to have an emergency action plan like someone
on the beach knowing where you are. I actually didn't take my own advice the other day the
waves were so good and the winds went back offshore New Jersey and I was after work so I jumped in
before dark and I was like where is everybody I'm surfing by myself and started to get the heebie
jeebies and one of those things they will say is if your intuition is off get out because you have
a lot more senses when you're in the elements than you think you do especially when you're in like a
a very contained space of nature your instincts start kicking in and you see a splash you see
something in the water you feel something weird you know what I mean your body kicks on stuff that
your brain doesn't even know yet so it might be worth getting out and checking just to make sure
everything's right you see birds hitting fish right near you you know little fish big fish big
fish follows a little fish just be aware you know what I mean like there's things that are
preventable but just by understanding of what's going on around you but again though like
sometimes time and circumstances like it's happened to multiple people that I know and they weren't
doing anything wrong it just happens you know like my friend passed my other friend lost his leg
I know another I know multiple people that are just like I actually know them it's not that I've
heard of them I actually know them so it's like it can happen you know what I mean I've only been
bumped in Florida of all places I was surfing in Palm Beach about mid-center between Reef Road and
then like say like the Bath and Tennis there's like the Mar-a-Lago area all over there I found
like an outside spot when I was like 19 I was lifeguarding down there to make some money and a
start I think it was sardines I'm not too sure so long ago but there was a run of fish and the pile
went through me and a bull shark just hit me like like physically hit me on my leg and I had already
thought I was bit and I literally sprint paddled like 200 yards back to shore still thinking I got
hit not looking because I knew I had to get back when I got back I just had a big whelp and the
thing didn't have its jaws open it's just the body hit me so hard so I was like yeah it's I had that
adrenaline spike of like I was not calm and cool I was you know shit in a brick to be honest with
you it's a scary thing I had a bizarre impact body surfing a while ago and I had this strange
it did it was I mean there was a bruise it was a graze but it was like the pain I've never felt
for I never thought about that what if I actually got pumped probably not I was shy shallow but
really big they're just aggressive you know what I mean like Makos usually will leave you alone
hammerheads will usually the bulls the bulls in Florida like that scares me that new Samurda
thing the whole like there's a hundred guys surf and I'm looking at all of them they're crazier than
the guys that surf pipe because I'm like I surfed it once and you can have it I'm good
All right well you mentioned Barefoot Brigade so I want to talk about where to find everything
that you do first but what about other books are there books that you love to recommend to people?
I just bought my daughter the talent code I've read it before talent codes I forgot the author
I'm just blanking right now so she's reading that and I got her soul surfer which was Bethany
Hamilton's book even though it's been out for a while she knows Bethany and I was like you should
read this like motivational she's kind of a hero like she for me she definitely she's a cool person
the family friends with all the family but she's a great person talent code is cool because it shows
how like time and effort actually dictates success versus talent it's not always talent it's like
generic skills but then refined and and just persistence actually trumps everything
I'm actually writing my second book my first one was a novel that I did for I think I told you why
I wrote that book originally is I had a bad concussion and I use it as a way to reorganize
my my brain and my structure so I wrote the novel so I could have like a more of a goal but this one
is totally different the working title is Come Hell or High Water and it's basically the story
of it's basically an autobiography but it's it's how I built skills over time to deal with stress
that I think could help other people and I'm going to use that hopefully to launch the funding from
my wife's non-profit I want to use the funding that comes from that book to help people stress
manage understand like we all deal with some heavy circumstances there's ways to mitigate it it's not
always perfect but you can do it but she wants to fund a study she's a she's a biologist scientist
and she also is a scent detection specialist with canines and we would like to work with canines to
do early detection for neuroblastoma specifically so that way young children that you know with
between urinalysis and saliva they could pick up because they can do this with other cancers
specifically for neuroblastoma has never been done so we want to work with different hospitals and
and get samples from willing participants to see if the dogs can pick up on this for early
detection because there really is no early detection it's like you walk in with inflammation
and then all of a sudden you're thrust into the craziest scenario of your life and you're stage
four versus as if you know like you know because you're not you're not going to just arbitrarily
give a two-year-old an MRI or CAT scan and the radiation all that extra stuff that you don't want
to do you need it at one point but if there's a way to kind of go like preemptively find these
neuroblastoma cells and and through you know very simple methods of a canine's nose we want to see
and prove a concept we think it can work and we want to figure out funding for that it's not cheap
so i'm going to write this book altruistically to give people stress management tools but then
use it as a catalyst to help more people on the back end that are dealing with what we deal with
so look out for that i'm going to try to get it done in the next six months we'll see if i can do it
amazing i just finished my second one so yeah it's it's a it's a fight isn't it yeah it's a fight
exactly and when now i have one i had my daughter was an infant when i wrote my first one so i'd
write during naps it's like okay i got two hours now i got two kids i'm like okay i might be talking
to my phone and then refining it you know what i mean it's gonna it's gonna be a trip but it's
a goal so i'll get it done brilliant yeah you talked about bethany hamilton my son was reading
soul surfer i think he was around around the same age about 10 because uh maybe a little bit older
but anyway she came on we were doing the zoom call and uh he came in and talked to her for a few
minutes and i literally became the world's coolest dad after that because that's right but i need to
get her back on i know uh you know her perspective even even of the pandemic was uh was a very
powerful one that i got to check it out that'd be cool yeah she was amazing all right well then
she's a great person this is a really good person she is she and again just seeing i mean you see
us in a documentary as well but not only coming back as an adaptive athlete but going like no no
i'm just gonna go surf with everyone else again and you know just tow me into that god knows how
big wave and i'll just do it we went on really yeah so her brother and then matahi uh was a
tahitian surfer was her safety in dark in the i'm not kidding in the dark she packed a 12-footer
that the footage couldn't pick up because it was so gray and she just did it for her own pride
and like a 12-foot wave of chopper you saw that like with gabriel mendia it was the same size wave
and she went for it and then if you look in fiji she actually competed and she won some heats
which is like it's mind-blowing like it's it's absolutely mind she's a champ she really is well
speaking of you know the film side what about films and documentaries any of those that you love
films i always go it's probably because i haven't had time to find much new but gattaca was always
my uh like go-to when i was a kid because i'm not very gifted like when you like i'm athletic
but very i would say like i'm like on a scale like a 10 i'm probably like a five or six i'm not like
a freak athlete but i i have a i'm pretty knuckleheaded where you tell me i can't do something
and that that storyline was all about like somebody who had to get all the genetics just gifted to him
through a gene line and the designer baby versus brother who didn't have any of that was myopic had
like eye issues had physical issue had asthma had all these issues but he always beat his brother
um in swim races and that was like their challenge and his brother got couldn't figure out how like
he's just better he's built better and he was i never i never saved anything for the swim back
like it's like just show it like the the concept is like if you give your all you're going to beat
someone that has has just like this natural ability because they're going to give up by will and if
your will is stronger you can you can do a lot more with it so i i still go back to that there's a lot
of other you know really cool things i've seen lately um but yeah that's the one i always go to
brilliant now you recommended last time we spoke when i asked about guest suggestions it was
peter comroy who came on and then craig davison i think was your recommendation too who had yeah
was amazing and obviously a fellow stuntman too so asking the same question now is there a person
you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military
and associated professionals of the world trying to think so brian canelana is always at the top
of my list he's he's usually busy with production so you never know but i know he might be at a gap
now between shooting because he's he's uh he's an amazing person he got offered to be the captain
of ocean safety on the west side and he was very deserving of it and and uh he already was essentially
the captain in everyone's mind at that time he designed a lot of programs with my uncle like we
call them uncles there but like terry ahui they designed the jet ski program and then he moved
during uh water world into the water safety and he's went all the way from being like a stunt
coordinator and a rigger all the way on a directing now he's directing the show so to see someone that
that that can win in one playing field move all the way into another playing field and then operate
at the highest level it's pretty amazing and his son is is following in his footsteps and doing very
cool stuff as well so brian is just he's exceptional he's a good he's actually the main thing about all
the kailan is that are family friends at this point nolan his nephews they're all and kioni
and all the guys there and uh brandon they're all family to me but him is like kind of the patriarch
of that family and with his dad uh buffalo kailan who's a legend as well the first life guard at
macaque that family just has there's there's so dynamic and so many things they do that you
could just pick their brain about like i call like nolan uh he's like you know like the in case of
emergency break glass like they have genius the family has genius and elements where most people
don't even like no like the guy nolan was on a trip with the hokulea from tahiti to hawaii and their
desalinization machine broke and he took you can't drink water on a sailboat in the middle of the
pacific you're gonna die he took it apart put it back together and just figured it out you know
what i mean and it's like he might not be your guy you want doing your hr and your it at some
company but when the s hits the f like those guys know how to figure it out and they're like
they're they've been extremely um influential in my life because the things that i give credence
to of skills that i wanted to learn and i didn't have i could go to them and kind of just shadow
and they never they never they're they're all about giving away the knowledge for free as far
as water safety so that's where nod came from is like i want to perpetuate that i never want to like
have something that i could help someone with and and like put it behind a paywall they've never
done that they just go like yeah if you need it we got it and i think they're they're extremely
admirable for that and same with terry who he very cut from the same cloth kind of thing
brilliant yeah brian um i know i think craig and uh his wife were trying to help me connect with
him i did have his number but i hadn't uh probably again i was probably reaching out at the wrong
time so i need to circle around and revisit that and i got a really good guy in new jersey too
uh matt giacetti he owns a um he was a former lifeguard he's a medic and he uh is helping with
this fox thing to promote that that bill 41 uh he has a company called life force another training
organization but he's very passionate about life saving and uh lifeguarding emt he's seen a lot of
stuff you know what i mean like because i was in emt when i first came back to new jersey to get
my family going and i will say it's out of all the things i've seen in fires probably but on the
volume that emt see one they're way underpaid to the stress management the lifestyle is totally
different i give it up to emt's because they see it all and it's pretty heavy and he's you know
still involved in lifeguarding but he's very medically sound with all the experience he has
he's just a good guy to talk to just about you know first response in general brilliant i'd love
to connect with him as well then okay i'll put you two together awesome thank you all right well
then the very last question before we make sure where everyone knows where to find your books
and your projects what you do to decompress uh jujitsu and surfing yeah mainly i i train every
day no matter what like i don't care what's going on if i have 20 minutes i'm working out just because
it puts me at like an even keel but jujitsu i think is something that more first responders should do
just because it's moving meditation you can't do two things at once not everyone has access to
surfing but these days everyone can you know train and grappling and jujitsu and for a guy like me
it's like one of those things is like one we got to get rid of our ego a lot and it's the greatest
way to humble yourself because you're never the you're never going to be the guy in every room
there's just it's just impossible and the levels are just so there's so many levels to it that it's
just like i'm never going to quit jujitsu because it's just even if i'm the old man at 70 just like
you know helping out doing light rolls with the white belts i'm going to be a part of it because
it's just it's a it's another great community like first responders surfing or lifeguarding that
it just helps your other part of your life i couldn't agree more all right well then for
people listening where can they find the books never off duty and any other places you want to
direct them to so never up to you dot org you can buy the barefoot brigade book there or on amazon
all the funds go to it's like a tom shoe you buy one we give one so we just we roll it in so say
the book is five dollars it costs around 250 to produce we purchase another one give it out to a
school we do have equipment on there we have gear we're coming out with different like funny t-shirts
like we've got like a listen to metal and save lives like all these just funny t-shirts like
one-offs more for the lifeguards because lifeguarding is kind of a community like that
my books on amazon my new book i'm doing it totally differently i'm just i already have the outline
and i'm shopping it i want someone to produce it the right way and get not bootstrap but i want it
to be done the right way because the end goal is to give people skill sets but also to save lives
downstream so i want to make sure that i can get the revenue and do the right thing with it and
and if i'm going to put my life and expose all the things that i've been through and how i've
managed it and how i've learned i want there to be a net benefit to multiple people so i have to do
it strategically so that's not going to be out probably until spring of next year i would say
but look forward and i'm sure i'll get somewhere brilliant well i want to thank you again i mean
you know we've obviously gone back and forth since the the first interview and then your family has
been through some incredibly hard times and i'm so glad to hear that everything's looking really
good again but uh i want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
behind the shield podcast today oh appreciate and good luck with everything you're doing a great job
we appreciate what you do