Have you ever saved a life in the water?
While Derek plays real estate agent, real surfers are doing things, heroic things, life-saving things.
Two days ago, surfer Ben Cross was in the water at Navarre Beach along Florida’s panhandle when he noticed an eleven-year-old kid floundering in the water, caught in a rip.
Cross paddled over, snatching him from certain drowning.
Was the act on par with Mikey Wright’s “Hold my beer” save on the North Shore? Not quite.
How could that be?
Still, Cross’s rescue saved a boy’s life yesterday.
And to top it off?
He walked away without taking any glory.
Here’s what ABC 3 – Pensacola reported:
“It was a typical Wednesday afternoon for Bebe Booth, taking pictures of dolphins on the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier — but that all changed when she spotted a young boy in her camera lens. He was really struggling,” she said. “The riptide actually took this boy out.
Moments later, she said she saw a nearby surfer come to the boy’s rescue.
‘If that young man didn’t make it there as fast as he did, the young boy wouldn’t be here with us,’ Booth said.
Navarre Beach Fire Rescue Chief Danny Fureigh says what happened was the difference between life and death for the boy, who got caught in a rip current.
Booth says after emergency crews came and assisted the boy back on land, the surfer left as a silent hero.
So she posted the photos she took on social media in hopes to give him the recognition he deserves.
We wanted to make sure that his name got out,” she said.
Her photo did just that and the nameless hero, Benjamin Cross, was found.
This scary story ultimately had a happy ending.
Benjamin’s mother, Andrea Cross, told WEAR-TV: “He is very grateful for all the love and support on social media the past couple of days and will receive a certificate and a T-shirt from the Navarre Beach Fire Department in recognition for his help with them yesterday.”
https://twitter.com/weartv/status/1411002802525048835
Classic: I saved a kid’s life, and all I got was this crummy t-shirt.
Have you ever saved a life in the water?
If so, did you want credit for it?
And a t-shirt?
I’ve never saved anyone. Disappointed somehow.
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I used to call them assists or saves. For saves, they were good as dead. Assists they may have got lucky on their own. Definitely dozens of legit saves. My favorite ones made international mags. I’m kinda trying to lay low here, though. Ran down from my porch a couple years ago and got one after the guards had went home. Even with my old, shot-out carcass. Feels great to help out when you can. Hugs from the family and all that.
Rescued more than 50 in another life!! As below the usual clamber all over ya stuff
Best one was guy whose eyeball was on his cheek as nose of his board had punched though lower eyelid and basically popped it out – held it on cheek till beach then found some gauze to hold it there with tape and ambos called!!
Ew
Hard to count. One kid got pulled up by his hair at Main Beach, Byron one morning. He was not coming back up under his own power. Handed him back to mum on the beach and she just walked off without thanking me. I tend to try to get involved before things turn to shit now.
A few years ago, two girls and their dad decided that a 3′ shorebreak on a secluded beach about 2km away from the flags was the place to go swimming. The girls were stuck in the gutter and scared shitless. Dad was useless. Standing on the sand bank yelling at them to swim in. I went out with a boogie board to use as a floatation device. Got the girls to hang on to it. Told them to not let go no matter what. First wave comes through and they both bail and duck under the wave…
Musta been your mohawk.
I helped save a guy recently, who decided it would be good idea to go for a swim in a rip on a gloomy, junky 3 foot morning. He’d likely be dead of one of the other guys in the water hadn’t spotted him slowly starting to drown. It’s amazing how quickly things can go bad in the ocean.
haha he was fishing in a normally pretty safe spot but on an incoming tide.. Only like 2ft but a surge up over the rocks was happening. Didn’t see him go in but I guess he just slipped or a set took him.
Yes! Once pulled a German tourist out of the water in Central America. “I con’t uze mize armz”
Does telling people to paddle in count? Who am I kidding I haven’t done that either …
Well, Mark Zuckerburg put a video of himself foiling while flying an American flag. How many horseman are we at now? When’s this apocalypse gunna kick off already?
Isn’t that Otto’s IUD?
Living rent-free in your head these days.
At least your out of your moms basement.
Since you don’t want to evict me, guess that means you also won’t mind if I mind fuck your gal when I don’t have my feet up on your kitchen table. Oh yeah, I also drank the last beer in your fridge. Mind grabbing a twelver of Coors yellow jackets while you’re out?
Two plus. The two were at the Santa Cruz Harbor during the Roaring 70s. The H____ B___ days. The harbor entrance was 100% treacherous on a minus tide and a big swell. Boats would come in sideways, get hit by a barreling wave, and flip.
Kinda like this: https://lookout.co/santacruz/news/story/2021-01-10/dramatic-rescue-scene-plays-out-at-santa-cruz-harbor-as-youth-sailboats-capsize
This boat flipped and most of the crew got thrown. One guy was paraplegic and strapped to his seat. A____ J____ risked his neck and dove under a boat that was getting pounded. He tried to cut the guy out of his chair but failed and the guy drowned.
Me and M_____ D____ grabbed this other guy who was heavy and wearing a heavy Army jacket and boots and no life preserver. M___ and I paddled him across the channel and put him on the sand on the north side.
He would have drowned for sure.
The second was just me. A nice old man flipped his boat inside of Little Jetty. When I paddled up he still had his cap on his head and his pipe in his mouth.
He looked like Popeye’s Pappy.
I helped him to shore but felt bad about him losing his boat.
The maybe was in Waikiki. A woman tourist got clipped by an outrigger down in the Duke statue end.
And they left her behind. Her bikini top had fallen down and she was in shock so I helped her in.
Where was the aloha on that one? They just left her.
It’s a nice thing to do, save someone’s life.
Just out of curiosity why do you think Santa Cruz became the serial killer capitol of America in the seventies? My guess is the combination of psychedelic drug use in combination with the isolated location of that town. When I lived there in 1983-1985 it had the same feel of Bolinas as far as the isolation but thirty times as big.
Grew up surfing in Bolinas with a guy whose father invented the television set. Don’t think he made much money from his invention, imagine that.
John McEnroe would also hang out there and do drugs when he played the Trans Am tennis tournament every year. Bolinas is so isolated he knew nobody would see him.
I moved to Santa Cruz in 1972 right when all of that was happening. Drugs probably had something to do with it: Kemper, Mullins, John Linley Frasier.
Did you watch Mindhunters? They did a very good job portraying Kemper: Huge guy, very bright, polite, deeply profoundly screwed up.
A frightening character, the things he did. As ghastly as Hannibal the Cannibal, but for real.
All of that always always comes down to family dysfunction – usually mom dysfunction – exacerbated by drugs.
Santa Cruz has always had a layer of cuckoo over it, and that cuckoo has changed from year to year.
There’s a world of difference between the early 1970s and the 1980s. Santa Cruz was still hippie in the early 1970s and through the 1970s – which made the place great, but also troubled.
A lot of – if you’ll excuse the expression – young hippie pussy running around and driving some men crazy. Crazy enough to rape and kill.
Zodiac Killer was late 60s to the early 1970s and Clint’s Dirty Harry movies were also from that era, with that same kind of cuckoo killer.
Now it’s more dangerous than ever, I think. You ride around town and go downtown and look people in the eye and there’s no one home.
It’s fucking scary to be honest. Truly. The zeitgeist of the town has changed, and not for the better.
It’s like a zombie show. Truly.
San Francisco, too. San Francisco is just unbelievably bad now.
I think people who are mentally ill prefer naturally beautiful places like Santa Cruz – and Hawaii – because it makes them feel marginally better.
Santa Cruz has always been tolerant of mentally ill people and also tolerant of drugs, but it’s possible to be too tolerant.
Santa Cruz has always always been strange, it’s just a different flavor of strange.
I would kill to put all that into this idea:
http://www.benmarcusrules.com/breaking-point-a-pitch-for-clint-and-scott-eastwood
Watch Mindhunters and dig Edmund Kemper: That is one scary, deadly, matter of fact muthahfuckah.
Weird time in the Bay Area. Seems like psychotic people took advantage of the whole free love, hitchhiking sleep around mentality and preyed on innocent victims. They say Altamont is when it all kind of when bad and the summer of love was over.
I was just a kid but even in my sheltered Ross Valley neighborhood I saw all kinds of hippies everywhere. Janis Joplin lived a few miles way along with the Grateful Dead.
Sad to say but I rarely go to Downtown ‘SF any more and only live twenty minutes north. It makes me unhappy seeing crazy people talking to themselves and smearing human shit all over the place. I sure as hell wouldn’t book a trip to visit SF as tourist, and that’s sad.
That is correct. Life was a little too loose and psychos took advantage: Zodiac, Mullen, etc.
You lived in Ross?
I’d never heard of Ross until I lived in Tiburon around 2001. S___ P___ built a house there right across from the police station.
He didn’t want to raise his kids in M____
I just read the novelization of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. And T____ got it right: 1969 was a transitional year: For Hollywood, for cowboys, for surfing, for a lot of things.
Greg Noll rode that giant wave at Makaha the same December week that Altamont happened, the LA Times trotted out Charles Manson on the front page and the first draft lottery was held.
End of innocence. In 1959 the big deal in Gidget was that Great Kahoona didn’t have a real job.
Ten years later….. Altamont, Manson.
P_____ just moved in down the road. She loves J____ J____ and wants to make a movie about her.
She should This is the best cover of a song, ever.
I’d never seen the live version before. This gives me chills:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I live and grew up in Kentfield. Spent my childhood playing tennis and swimming at the Kents, a beautiful house that should have been turned into a historic site. They owned all of Muir Woods as well as other land, and gave it away to make a national park.
Saw a documentary about the Rolling Stones playing Altamont and you could feel the evil in the air just by watching the footage. Mick Jagger and the devil costume he was wearing added to the darkness and negative feel about it all.
You’re right S___ P___ used to live there. Goldie Hawn also. She would answer the door on Halloween and give kids candy. The whole area has a lot of film industry people that live up here. I think its because it’s low key and they don’t get harassed by people.
I highly recommend Tiburon, if you happen to own a bank.
The NorCal Malibu.
I lived on Mar East Street for a while.
Sone good surf geography – kind of like Sharks to Privates – but no swell.
Tiburon’s nice but Mt Tam blocks the fog in the summer in Kentfield. It can be foggy and cold in Mill Valley and Tiburon but be eighty degrees where I live. Nice views of the city and Angel Island over there.
Would be cool if swell got that far into the bay. Winds would be perfect there also.
No Tiburon is in that Blue Hole also. That’s Tiburon’s big secret that you don’t realize until you live there: It stays sunny when the rest of the coast is fogged in from Big Sur to Bolinas. Another reason it’s so expensive, but the best way to go to Giants’ games is the Tiburon Ferry,
Learned something about Marin I didn’t know, all about microclimates here. Have a good rest of your fourth.
I forgot to say that the link for your idea dosn’t work.
Try again:
http://www.benmarcusrules.com/breaking-point-a-pitch-for-clint-and-scott-eastwood
I would kill to write this with either John Milius and/or Paul Haggis and/or Quentin Tarantino.
Who wouldn’t want to write this and who wouldn’t go see it?
Don’t know if Santa Cruz would allow this to be shot in Santa Cruz though.
Thanks I’ll read it. I think it’s an issue with Disqus. If I right click and highlight it then choose go to this address it worked.
It’s a good idea: For Dirty Harry fans but also a very contemporary stoey with a serious theme: What to do about the homeless/druggie/thief population that is out of hand and out of control?
As I said: San Francisco is zombie movie and Santa Cruz is pretty bad.
Insulting if you grew up there during quieter times.
I would kill to pitch it to Tarantino. He would get it.
Don’t even have to exaggerate the reality of what’s happening to make it into a scary science fiction movie. Sad that California has to be the backdrop of it all.
It really is that bad, isn’t it?
Well California has 1/9th the population of the entire country so California have nine times the problems.
And other states use California as a dumping ground/penal colony for their homeless – so it’s out of control.
Truly. I was shocked by San Francisco, and this was a couple years ago.
Saw a guy ODing in the street in broad daylight, middle of the day, near Union Square.
It’s either the rich or the homeless, no more middle class. I wonder if things can get back to becoming a healthy affordable society again or is it a trajectory that can’t be reversed?
Marin has become a protected society from crime and the homeless people that are everywhere in the rest of the Bay Area. I’ve seen a few panhandlers in front of supermarkets but in a few minutes somebody calls the sheriff and three police cars show up with deputies wearing rubber gloves to “escort him or her away”.
Don’t know how it’s going to end up, My guess is an ever increasing disparity of wealth with walled off communities. Maybe parts of the state will be designated as permanent homeless camps with daily food delivered. Sacramento Valley would be my guess.
When people pay millions of dollars for a house they don’t want to see beggars harassing them when they go to the supermarket.
I haven’t been to Santa Cruz in a while but I hear it’s really bad. Needles in the San Lorenzo River etc.
There must be the most intense pressure on high school kids to get into a good college nowadays. It seems like the way society has become, saying that “college is not my thing” is a death sentence. No such thing as deciding not to go to college and still being able to get married have kids and buy a house.
Read the pitch and you definitely hit on the issues that cause a lot of anger around here. Bits and pieces remind of other movies or other real world events. The Unabomber comes to mind. A researcher was killed by one of his packages who lived in Tiburon.
I saw a movie in the nineties also where they had satellites that could kill people from space that had somehow not been put in jail for their crimes, and the movie Falling Down all appeal to our desire to see people pay for their crimes.
I’m sure it would be a sold out crowd in the Bay Area, but one thing I have realized is that the rest of the country has other things that make them want to go see a movie. Not sure what, maybe I’m wrong. Been all over the world but never to the South or to the East Coast. Seems like a different world compared to California.
You have so many ideas on your site and a lot of them deserving of more in depth writing.
I would love to write the C____/S____ E_____ movie but it might be too politically incorrect for them, and I doubt Santa Cruz would allow it to be shot there.
And they might not have the rights to those Dirty Harry characters.
I saw K____ R_____ running down M____ R____ this morning and want to pitch him that screenplay western set in Santa Barbara in 1850.
And yes there are bits and pieces of lots of Clint Eastwood movies, but also Point Break, Lots Boys and some of the Santa Cruz movies.
The movie is dead serious about the homeless on one level, but is also a tribute to Clint and his movies on another.
I’ve been watching lots of John Ford movies and they are like that: Very serious but with comic characters and scenes.
I think the world would go see a movie with Clint and Scott Eastwood. Multi-generational and just the “Clean Harry” hook would be appealing.
The combination of humor and extreme violence is a good one. Sweet and sour yin and yang. I think in today’s world of cancel culture and anybody under the age of thirty needing therapy if they hear an off color joke would make it difficult.
I guess it goes in cycles. I remember how refreshing Animal House was because everybody was so sick of the seventies and incense and granola.
Clint was not at all afraid to be politically correct in his day, and this movie would take the same tack.
It’s a tricky topic: How to deal with the homeless.
Clint would have been all over it.
It would be fun to write, anyway.
The bad guys/vigilantes are surfers.
Bolinas has always been strange too. They hide the highway signs to keep people from coming in.
I cant believe someone doesn’t get nailed by Mr. White once a week there.
That place is an A&W Restaurant for white sharks.
I did a story on a guy named Lee Fontan who got popped there in the 90s. One minute he’s surfing Bolinas, the next he’s in the ICU in Castro Valley, cut to ribbons.
The difference these days it is the toxicity of the drugs.
When I was younger, drugs like meth and heroin were for bikers and gangsters and hardcore jailbirds – not for common consumption.
Now meth and heroin are everywhere and people are just incredibly strung out. Again, you ride a bike around Santa Cruz and you see it in people’s eyes.
Even pot is psychotically strong these days. My friends in SC grow some of the world’s finest cannabis. One of the guys I surfed the Y___ H___ with has a 52,000 square foot indoor operation in C_____.
100% legal. I’m proud of him.
But neither he nor any of them would dream of touching the stuff.
Pot is debilltating and more insidious than it gets credit for. Makes smart people dumb and dumb people dumber, more forgetful, paranoid.
When I was growing up there, Santa Cruz was Bedford Falls – a nice little surfer hippie town that was cheap and friendly and had a killer music scene.
It really was fun.
But now… fuck me Alice.
Santa Cruz is Pottersville. It’s been corrupted and it’s not funny and it’s not cute and it doesn’t seem to be a solvable problem.
Covid didn’t make it any better.
Nobody under the age of twenty one should smoke weed IMHO. It’s not like beer where it’s out of your system the next day. It lingers for weeks, and there is so much we are learning about the development of the brain.
Totally agree.
Sting said that a long time ago: Don’t take drugs until you’re over 30.
Especially now.
If you rolled one of those bomber Big Bambu joints like we did back in the Swinging 70s, you’d be paralyzed.
I tried a little in Hawaii and I was walking around the parking lot at Kewalo Basin in me undies, and the security guards were worried about me.
I see McEnroe around M____ some times. He is surprisingly little. But a nice, funny guy.
His son came that close to drowning while standup paddling off The Colony when the Devil Winds came up and blew him out to sea.
Lifeguards found him hypothermic and clinging to a lobster buoy
NonJohn saved an Marine beefcake who was about to go down in 4’ impact zone. Muscle man panic wrapped his arms around NonJohn’s neck and tried to drown him too. Beefcake could not listen to any verbal instructions due to his temporary insanity. NonJohn saved himself and beefcake after taking a few on the head. Beefcake was grateful. NonJohn had extra rations that day.
I was ats ans beach and am ones man wents ins a waters and I saids, I don’t know abouts thats. Then he hads a troubles and I saids, come to the beach. He did then and he was a chinamen.
Beautiful story, thanks for sharing.
3 alive. One resuscitated. One deceased.
All but the resuscitated one were in smallish conditions. Easy jobs.
The resuscitated one was fucked up.
My friend and I were hitchhiking to the next set of beaches around the coast.
This beautiful desolate beach in Africa, recently featured in a clip by a professional unboxer, was way too big to surf. Mile long close outs detonating on the outer bank.
We saw her from the road a mile away. Flagged down a bakkie who raced us down to her.
Fuck it was huge. Rips like flooded rivers. No wetsuit for flotation. Outside detonations.
We lost sight of her, but as we were about to give up my friend bumped into her.
Hauled her in where others took over.
If you haven’t saved at least one you probably should’t call yourself a surfer, the two go hand in hand.
What a stupid comment. What if you’re surrounded by competent people who are smart enough not to get into trouble or know how to manage it if they do?
So… You’re telling us you’re not a surfer then?
I’m an aquatic poncer
Obviously
2 would have been 3 but guy died from a heart attack after getting him in.
Solid effort mate.
Marines on north shore you can predict it as soon as they hit the sand. Saved a guy in front of his friends at petroglyphs and he cried on the beach while his friends thanked me a Lifegaurd passed by and gave me a nod was feeling pretty good about myself.
I accidentally put one of my ex girlfriends in serious danger in the water three times due to my over exuberance. I saved her on all three occasions. She eventually dumped me for being a degenerate drunk. I don’t imbibe anymore and we’ve remained friendly.
By friendly you mean flood her e-mail with memes.
That’s touching. From the heart.
dozens of lives I’ve saved.
Even some Lebs, mostly asians, only a couple of guys
I grabbed a Chinese bloke who fell in at a rocky point/cove in town once while fishing. Weird thing was he could swim a bit was refusing to.. slowly drifting toward a different rock shelf and screaming obscenities in Mandarin or Cantonese perhaps. The screaming didn’t stop after I hauled him onto my board and he ripped out my fin box coming ashore. I swum along pushing him onto little crumblers to get in. I hope the overlords log this and I’m spared in the takeover.
I just tell em sharks are scared of flags.
Is it racist to always feel like going to a Chinese restaurant for dinner every time I read a story about Chinese people? So confusing. I also choose asian women for all my doctors.
better that than choosing ’em as your drivers
Weird how they’re the best at stand up boogie boarding but can’t drive worth a shit.
My friends and I went down to smoke a joint in Capebreton and watch the Sunday crowd carnage. Surf school dropped a fat little kid in the side shore wind slop and rip and sent him straight to the rock wall. My stoned Irish mate had to strip down to his jocks in the freezing cold and grab him. He’d have gotten very fucked up for sure.