It was the summer of 1970 and I had just graduated from Glendale High School in California. I had been working at the Glendale YMCA as a lifeguard and a swimming instructor for two years, and just finished teaching a Water Safety Instructors class. My younger brother Jim was one of my students. I talked the management at the YMCA into setting up a surfing trip for a group of teens to Ensenada Mexico. We put together a group of young surfers and staff from the “Y’ and caravanned from Glendale to Mexico, crossing the border into Tijuana and drove to a place just north of Ensenada, camping out in a field. That night we listened to the waves break as we were falling asleep and dreamt of the waves we would be riding in the morning.
Upon awakening, the waves at a place we knew as “three M’s” were good, but not epic. As the tide went out the swell dropped. We all went in to get a bite to eat and rehydrate because it had gotten very hot under the mid-day sun. At about 12:30, my brother Jim decided to get wet to cool off. I pointed out that the swell was only about two feet and we were hoping it would pick up when the tide came in, but he insisted on getting wet, so out he went. I saw him paddling into a wave so I figured I would go out and hang with him. I started waxing my board. When I looked up, I saw my brother’s board floating (this was pre-leash era) but did not see him anywhere near it. I had my short john wet suit pulled down to my waist. I stood up and still couldn’t find him. I walked fast to the edge of the water calling his name. Now I was getting really worried, I took two steps and launched my board in front of me and began to paddle like a madman, calling his name. I was really getting pissed thinking he was playing some sort of game.
I finally saw him and he was floating face down. Now, I was really pissed, if this was a game it was not funny. I pushed off my board and grabbed him hard by his hair and rolled him over. His face was blue and he wasn’t breathing. I immediately started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. My board drifted out of reach. The water was too deep to touch bottom. It was hard to keep him ventilated and move to the beach at the same time. Twice I had to exchange breathe with the same breath under water. The second time he vomited in my mouth, I just swallowed it and kept trying to get him to breath. I actually had a twinge of relief thinking if he vomited he was still alive. I finally found a rock to stand on and called for help. I continued mouth to mouth carrying him in my arms across the rocks toward the beach.
The other guys came out and helped me carry him on to the beach. I stayed at his head so that I could continue to breathe for him. After about ten minutes on the beach he began to breath on his own, but he did not wake up. A few minutes later he seized and stopped breathing again, so I started mouth-to-mouth again. A few minutes later he started breathing again. On that beach I prayed harder than I had ever prayed in my life, trying to trade my life for his. We pulled my Country Squire station wagon as close as we could. Some of the others went to call an ambulance (decades before cell phones). But after fifteen minutes the only Mexican surfer there offered to lead us to the hospital in Ensenada. This young man never left our side and made a giant difference, yet now almost 50 years later I still don’t know his name. Driving into town we drove by an ambulance that was in a shop getting worked on. Our young Mexican hero explained what happened and said that we needed help. We put Jim on the ambulance gurney and into the back of the ambulance and headed into Ensenada with lights and siren on. Right in the middle of the city the hood of the ambulance popped up blinding the driver and we spun around in an intersection. The gurney broke free and Jim and I went sliding around in the back of the ambulance.
When we finally got to the hospital, there was no doctor. But, there was a phone. Our hero arranged for an English-speaking operator. I gave her my home phone number and called home. My dad answered, I blurted out,” Jim drowned.” Then after a long pause, I said “but he is breathing.” My mother told me later that he turned ashen and fell down in a chair. I told him he had to get us out of here, an ambulance or a helicopter or something, anything to get us home as quickly as possible. At this point I noticed blood around the gurney my brother was lying on and told my dad “he is bleeding.” I told him I would call him back and again repeated that we needed to get out of here now.
Seeing the blood on the floor around my brother made me think I had missed something. They told me later I went over to his bed and lifted him up over my head and said, “Where is he bleeding?” Jim weighed twenty pounds more than I did at the time and was on the football team. I put him back down on the bed when they told me that I was the one that was bleeding and not my brother. I had managed to seriously cut up the bottom of my feet carrying him across the rocks.
I went back to the phone and the English-speaking operator was there waiting on the line. Without having to ask she called my father again. I told my dad the blood was from a cut on my foot and it was no problem. He said he contacted the naval hospital in San Diego and they were trying to figure a way to get us out of there. My father was a retired “Top Gun” Navy Fighter pilot and was working with the Office of Naval Research at the time; he knew how to make things happen in the Navy. I was counting on him to have my back.
Then the doctor came in and walked up to my brother. He did not speak any English and I did not speak any Spanish. The young Mexican surfer translated for us. The doctor apparently said that if my brother stayed there, he would die, and that there was nothing he could do for him. I went to the phone and the operator was still on the line and she started dialing my father again. I told him what the doctor said and told him Jim won’t live long enough for an ambulance and that we needed a helicopter…there was no other option. He said he was working on it.
Periodically Jim would seize and stop breathing again and I would give him mouth to mouth again. This happened many times, how many I cannot recall.
My father, working from home contacted the Navy and the Marines.
Serendipitously, President Richard Nixon was in the Western Whitehouse at Cottons Point. My father had arranged to launch the back-up helicopter for the president’s Marine One. This required both the president’s and the secret service’s approval. I was told they were en-route to the naval hospital to pick up a medical crew to come and pick up Jim. He asked for the phone number I was using and the operator who was listening spoke up and gave it to him and said she would put them right through. A few minutes later the call came through and they asked me, “What were they doing for my brother at the hospital?” I said, “nothing.” They asked if I could get him to the airport. Our hero arranged for the ambulance to come back and take us to the airport to await the helicopter. While waiting, my brother seized again and I had to start him breathing again.
When the helicopter was in sight, I had a tremendous feeling of relief. The helicopter did not land, apparently because it was military helicopter and had permission to fly over Mexico but not to land. The Corpsman jumped out of the helicopter and came over to the ambulance. He cut off the straps of my brother’s short john wet suit to make it easier for him to breath. They put him on an oxygen mask which they had not been able to do in the hospital or the ambulance.
We put the gurney in the helicopter but the ambulance attendant said we couldn’t take it and wanted me to pay for the ambulance. I was still wearing my short john tied around my waist and had no money. The YMCA assistant director said he would stay as collateral. So, they dump my brother on the floor of the helicopter and we took off. Apparently, our unknown hero paid for the ambulance and drove the assistant director to the border. This is not the type of Mexican I hear our current president speaking about.
I don’t remember much about the helicopter ride except the feeling of relief that someone else was now responsible for my brother. It was not a medivac enclosed helicopter we see today. Jim was lying on the floor of this giant Sikorsky Marine Helicopter; the door was open and it was cold with my short john wetsuit pulled to my waist. It seemed only minutes to get to the San Diego Naval Hospital after almost three hours with my kid brother’s life in my hands.
When we landed there was a real gurney and a crew of people waiting for us, a huge relief for me. We were lead into the emergency room and a group of doctors’ and nurses gathered around him and started IV’s and did blood test. They sat me in a chair at the foot of his bed. This was the first time I had noticed I had some pain in my feet. As the test came back they seemed more concerned and told me, “We will keep him alive until your parents get here.” I lost it, I said, “I got him here and you are just going to keep him alive.” They started to move him to take an x-ray so I got up and followed. He had not been out of my sight since I found him. They physically stopped me after I took 4 or 5 steps on the brand-new carpeting, leaving bloody footsteps on the carpeting. The ER staff made me sit back in the chair, letting me know that they would be right back.
When Jim was rolled back into the room in the Emergency Department he had a tube in his mouth and was connected to a green plastic box that went click he would breath in and when the machine clicked again he would exhale. I got up and said “What have you done, I got him here breathing and now it is a machine doing it.” At this point, they had security come to the bed-side to make me stay in my chair.
They came and said “we have to stop your feet from bleeding and clean them up” and wanted to give me a shot for pain. By this point I no longer trusted the medical staff, so I refused any medication and told them to do what they needed to do. They got a bucket and a scrub brush and some brown colored water and scrubbed the bottom of my feet to get all the caked-in sand and dirt from all the scrapes and lacerations. I didn’t pay any attention to what they did even though they caused a lot more bleeding. I was only focused on Jim and really felt no pain. They wrapped my bloody feet in bandages and gave me some paper slippers to hold them in place.
Then they told me they were going to admit him to the ICU and I would have to wait here in the Emergency room for my parents. I told them in no uncertain terms that he was not leaving my sight. Again they called security. About a minute later my parents arrived. They were told to control me or I would be forcibly sedated. I started to cry and melted into their arms. Sobbing, “I’m sorry, I did the best I could to take care of Jim.” My mother was crying, my dad was struggling to be strong but I could see and feel his pain. I sensed he was disappointed in me and I had let him down, though these were my thoughts and absolutely not my fathers.
After several minutes they convinced me to get into a wheel chair and follow Jim to the ICU waiting room. The waiting room was about 9 feet by 12 feet and where I would spend most of the next week. My parents and I were only allowed to be in the ICU for five minutes every hour. I never missed my time for the next five days every hour 24 hours a day. The ICU was long ward with 12 to 14 beds. About half the patients on ventilators, including my brother. He had a tube in his mouth to breath for him, another in his nose going to his stomach, and another in his penis which I knew would really piss him off (no pun intended). The machine continued to breathing for him. It would click and he would breath in and it would click again and he would breath out.
After about three days in a coma they did a study to see if he was brain dead. Apparently, it was inconclusive because of some underlying seizure activity. They said they were going to have to repeat the study in a few days. They started talking to us about taking him off the ventilator and letting him die. I felt that would not be their job but mine since I had brought him back. My time at his bedside was spent telling Jim I was sorry for putting him in this mess. I felt totally guilty about being so arrogant as to think I could organize a trip like this to Mexico, thinking I could save him only to bring him back to this existence.
On day five he was supposed to get another test to see if he was brain dead. I was at his bed-side helping the corpsman change the sheets because his catheter had become disconnected and urine had leaked all over the bed. We rolled him to his right side. He suddenly reached up and pulled the tubes out of his lungs and stomach with one swift movement. He looked straight at me and said “What the fuck.”
I grabbed him looking straight in his eyes for the first time in five days and said, “Who am I?” He responded saying, “You are the dumbest mother-fucker in the world, my brother Rob.” When I went out to tell my mother he woke up she just hugged me and cried, but by the time she was allowed to go in to see him he was hypoxic and did not even recognize her which really broke her heart at that time.
Later that day they had to sedate him and reintubate him and put him on the ventilator for three more days. That was last day I was able to be at his bedside. I was standing at his bedside when I passed out and woke up in the emergency room. I had an IV in my arm and was told I had a fever and was pretty anemic. Apparently, I had lost a lot more blood then they originally thought. They also thought I had a strep throat but it turned out to be Mononucleosis. While in the Emergency room that day I watched my draft number come up and realized I may have to pay back the promise to God I had made on that beach that day.
I was allowed to see him one more time before they sent me home. He squeezed my hand on command. Jim was out of the hospital in nine days and was at a party with friends on day ten. It took me almost two months to recover.
On the beach that day I swore I would never be that ignorant again when my family needed me. I took an advanced first-aid class with my mother. By August I got a job as an ambulance attendant in East LA. I became an EMT and ended up in the navy as a corpsman working in the same ICU my brother was in. Seven years later I was in Mexico going to Medical school since they were not taking any Vietnam veterans, “Baby Killers”, in American Medical schools at the time. Three years later I transferred to Northwestern University Medical School, graduating in 1982 and did my residency in Emergency Medicine at LA county USC. Now, 48 years later I teach Emergency Medicine and trauma to other doctors, residents, PA’s, Paramedics and Nurses.
I still surf as often as I can. Jim is a real estate broker in San Diego and doing well. My whole life trajectory changed that day on that little beach in Mexico. Those events propelled me into becoming a doctor and focusing my life on helping humanity. As the bible says; “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not toward your own understanding and he will direct your path.”
Lessons learned:
- First don’t lose your board. It would have been a lot easier to breathe for him and to get him in to the beach on the surfboard.
- Second, I should have worried about a possible neck injury, which in this case was not an issue.
- Third, when you need help in a strange place and things are out of control, angels may appear in any form or nationality and you must let them know how much you appreciate what they have done while you can, just in case you never see them again.
This story is dedicated to the young Mexican surfer who stepped up to help save my brother’s life so many years ago.
THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY SOUL
Written By: Robert Lawson
Edited By: Michael Allen, MPhil
Rob (L) and Jim (R) in 1971, a year after the near fatal surfing accident.
Robert Lawson, MD – Punta de Mita, Mexico, 2018; Photo credit: Michael Allen, MPhil.