Powers of Observation

I like to think I’m a fairly “observant” person. By that I mean I try to watch, listen and notice what’s going on around me including paying attention to the people I’m with. But sometimes I fail because I get distracted by worries or the myriad of technology that we all have to interact with daily. My wife struggles with the same issue because she works two jobs and between our four children and six grandchildren, there is always something or someone needing her attention. In fact I kid her about it a lot, like when I gave her roses recently…and she walked right by without noticing them! But then….all that changed on Saturday!

 

Saturday was a very stressful day for both of us. My wife had to host a six hour Annual Meeting for the South County Outreach and I had to give a motivational speech in the morning and then shoot 3 hours of video for a new website our company is developing. So by 3:00pm Saturday we were both exhausted. When we arrived home, all we wanted to do was go outside, sit on the patio and enjoy the ocean view. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperating. It was cold and windy with extremely rough water.

 

After sitting down for only a few minutes my wife said she saw something way out in the ocean. She said it looked like a seal or maybe a person and she asked me to get our binoculars. I took a look and saw what appeared to be a man about a quarter mile out in the ocean, bobbing in the water. He wasn’t swimming and he wasn’t waving his arms for help, but something didn’t look right. My wife was already dialing 911 before I even finished telling her what I saw. She had them immediately patch her through to the Dana Point Harbor Patrol.

 

In the meantime, I grabbed my Paddleboard and started running towards the water. When I reached the shoreline I hesitated. I still had street clothes on and the water was extremely rough and cold, but I didn’t know how long it would take for the Rescue Boat to get there, so I knew I had to try to do something. It felt like it took forever to get through the waves and paddle out to the man but it was probably only 15 minutes. By the time I got there the Sheriff’s Rescue Boat was also arriving. I called out to the man but he was unresponsive and not moving. Fortunately he had on a Life Vest so his head was above water. When the two Sheriffs grabbed him by the vest and pulled him onto their boat he looked ashen and was obviously suffering from hypothermia. The Rescue Boat took off and I spent the next hour fighting the wind and waves to get back to the shore.

 

When I finally did get back home my wife asked me if the man was okay and I had to give her the bad news, that it didn’t look good. But we got great news an hour later when the phone rang and a Sheriff told me to thank my wife for calling in because her quick response saved the man’s life. He had been in the water for over three hours and was extremely hypothermic. Any longer and he probably would have died. I will never call my wife “unobservant” again!



February 8, 2014 - Dana Point Sheriffs rescue man after 3 hours in the water

It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the

whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.

  ~ K.T. Jong