‘Hold your breath.’ Cal Poly student rescues drowning girl while surfing at Pismo Beach
When a woman began shouting for help and pointing at a black speck in the waves off the coast of Pismo Beach this weekend, a Cal Poly freshman sprang into action.
Bennett Morris, 18, immediately began paddling out on his surfboard to help.
“That was the picture-perfect definition of what drowning looked like,” said Morris, a Los Gatos native who’s studying bioresources and agriculture engineering at Cal Poly.
Morris, who is not a lifeguard, started surfing this summer before moving into a Cal Poly residence hall in San Luis Obispo.
Morris and his girlfriend Bella De Meo were surfing south of the Pismo Beach pier around 3 p.m. Saturday when they heard a group of women shouting. Morris said he looked out and saw a young girl struggling in the ocean waves past the break.
“There’s just this small black spot, just barely out of the water, and it was this girl trying to keep her head up,” said Morris, who had helped two kids on boogie boards paddle in from near the break an hour or so earlier. “She was barely keeping her face above the water, and every now and then you would see a hand come up trying to keep herself out of the water.”
As Morris reached the flailing girl, he recalled, she turned face down in the water.
When he pulled her head up, she regained consciousness, he said.
According to Morris, the girl was wearing a hijab and layers of clothing that had become soaked with saltwater, weighing her down.
“She was maybe 10, 11, 12 years old and she was a small girl ... but with her clothes being so water-logged, she was so incredibly heavy,” Morris said.
With one arm wrapped around his surfboard and another around the girl, keeping her above water, Morris said he began kicking back toward shore while large waves crashed on top of the pair.
“Right as the wave would come I would tell her ‘Three, two, one. Hold your breath,’ and it would hit us and I’d hold onto her and then I’d pull her up out of the water as fast as I could,” Morris said.
The girl went in and out of consciousness the whole way to the shore, he said.
According to Morris, as he reached shallow waters, he began directing people nearby to help him get her to the sand and run to the lifeguards for help.
“The women were so scared that none of them had actually gone to the lifeguard station,” Morris said, so he pointed it out to them. “They were obviously terrified and kept asking ‘Is she going to be OK? Is she going to be OK?’ ”
When lifeguards with the Pismo Beach Lifeguard Division arrived, Morris said he sat down, exhausted.
Morris said he felt relief “knowing that she was at least coming back to conscious,” adding that he appreciated “having the lifeguards take over and know(ing) that they’re there to do their job.”
Morris said the girl was carried on a stretcher to the parking lot where an ambulance and first responders awaited to treat her.
“By the time we got there to the parking lot, she was sitting upright in the back of the lifeguard truck,” Morris said of the girl. “And that was a huge relief to see. It was a relief knowing I got her to shore, knowing she wasn’t going to be out there fighting the waves anymore.”
According to Pismo Beach battalion chief Paul Lee, three lifeguards, an ambulance and an engine responded to the scene but the girl didn’t need a hospital transport.
Morris said he approached the girl’s family to check how they were doing.
“I don’t know if her parents recognized who I was, but she had a look on her face like she recognized who I was. She had this very embarrassed smile on her face,” Morris said. “She just gave me this big hug and squeezed real tight and I told her ‘I’m so happy you’re safe and you’re OK.’ ”
Morris said he never caught the girl’s name or age.
The Cal Poly student said Saturday’s incident serves as a good reminder to be safe and alert among the waves.
Lee said if beach-goers see a possible drowning, to immediately get a lifeguard’s attention. He said if no lifeguard is present, people should call 911 and describe as specifically as they can where they are located.
“The ocean’s a dynamic place and the danger level can change quickly,” Lee said.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 4:04 PM with the headline "‘Hold your breath.’ Cal Poly student rescues drowning girl while surfing at Pismo Beach."
