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A rookie, teenage California lifeguard who saved a young boy from drowning amid massive waves – while a bystander recorded dramatic video – has spent his whole life preparing for such a moment, according to his father.
Ryder Williams, 16, said he refused to let go of the child because he knew the boy would almost certainly die if he did, the lifeguard’s father, Shane, recounted on Tuesday, three days after the pulse-pounding rescue.
“He told me: ‘I just was not going to let that happen,’” Shane Williams said during a telephone interview. “I almost started crying because how determined he was to save that boy’s life makes me so proud.”
Shane Williams’s comments lent a unique perspective to a rescue off Seabright beach in Santa Cruz that local authorities say unfolded when a child lost his balance, got knocked down by a wave and was swept into the Pacific Ocean about 15 yards offshore on Saturday afternoon.
An on-duty, California state parks lifeguard who was later identified as Ryder saw the boy in distress and ran to him help, officials said in a statement. Video of the scene captured by photographer Scott Vander Dussen and posted to his Santa Cruz Now account on Instagram showed Ryder braving enormous waves to reach the 10-year-old boy and then clutching onto him.
Several bystanders went against standard public safety advice by trying to help Ryder as potent waves crashed over the lifeguard and the boy; but the surf rebuffed them, and they retreated, the video showed.
Ryder somehow maintained his grip even as the waves tossed him and the boy around – and eventually a fellow lifeguard was able to join him and assist in bringing the child safely back to shore.
After he published it online, Vander Dussen’s video spread widely. Many internet users commenting on the footage called Ryder a hero. Some pleaded to be provided with his social media handle to shout him out that way.
Ryder was oblivious to all of that because he is not on social media, Shane said on Tuesday. The father also said his son genuinely believed he had merely done what lifeguards are trained to do.
“He told me he doesn’t know why everyone was blowing this out of proportion,” Shane added. “His comments to me are like … ‘Any other lifeguard on duty would do the same thing I did.”
Shane, a retired firefighter, nonetheless acknowledged it made him emotional to see his son demonstrate that level of poise under such high stakes – in the summer before his junior year of high school.
He said it did not seem that long ago when he and Ryder’s mother took him as a baby on a beach cruise alongside the Santa Cruz cliffs. Soon after that, Ryder was taking swimming lessons – and learning how to surf and boogie board like his father and grandfather.
Ryder could swim completely on his own by the time he was about six, Shane said. As he got older, he excelled at water polo, playing the position of hole set, which involves constantly fighting off opponents trying to prevent him from scoring or passing the ball to fellow attackers.
Shane said he and Ryder’s mother, Shannon Johnson – a marine science research technician – would often joke about being uncomfortable “with everyone trying to drown our boy”.
But Shane said Ryder translated that comfort with battling in the water to years of junior lifeguard training. He eventually enrolled in the California state parks lifeguard academy and fought through four days of fever to complete the program and begin his rookie year on the job.
The episode on Saturday that ended up in the Santa Cruz Now video was one of 34 rescues reported by his lifeguard district over the weekend, state officials said, as the National Weather Service (NWS) warned of perilous waves and rip currents associated with distant tropical cyclones.
It was the first rescue of Ryder’s career. The second one came shortly after he shifted off duty, when he had a hand in saving two other people who became distressed in the water under circumstances he considered to be more difficult than the ones seen on the viral clip, as his father put it.
The key difference between the two rescues was that nobody captured the second one on video – not that it mattered to Ryder.
“It’s just been in his DNA since he was born,” Shane said. “He sees [what happened Saturday] as his job – his duty. He did his job that day.”
Shane furthermore said he didn’t mind admitting that he was unsure he would have been able to hold onto the boy his son rescued in the manner Ryder did.
“He was such a stud out there,” Shane said. “I’m super, super proud of him.”
English (US) ·