837: Swim Towards the Shark
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A quick warning; there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Maybe you saw this story in the news earlier this summer. A man's getting mauled by a shark, maybe a hundred yards out from a beach near San Diego. He else for help, he else shark. A woman swimming near him also yells. And some guys hear it and swim towards the shark attack to rescue him. Which they do. He lives. So, you know, happy ending. But here's the question. I couldn't stop thinking about this. Who does that? Who hears somebody else shark and swims towards the shark? What kind of person is that? So, I work in real estate development for a company that's based out of LA in Brentwood. We build apartments, hotels, resorts, offices. We meet Cameron Whiting, 31, single, newly moved to San Diego. And it was there the morning of the shark attack with a group, the North County Ocean Swimmers, that meets four times a week, swim a mile, a mile and a half or more. I was out in the water about a hundred yards offshore, just past the breaking waves with another swimmer, Kevin Barrett. And do you guys had you finished your swim for the day? Yep. We were done with our swim. Most of the group had made their way in, somewhere in the showers, somewhere kind of playing in the waves. Kevin and I were body surfing beyond the break and that's when we heard the screaming. How far is it from you? He was probably 50 to 75 yards from us. So, just barely within shouting reach. It was hard for us to hear the screams, but the tone of it was so extreme that we knew something really bad was happening. So, this is the moment I wanted to ask you about, somebody else's shark, and then you swim towards the shark. Could you just talk about that moment? Yeah, that's one of the moments that, you know, in the four weeks since this has happened, that I just keep her playing and in the moment, everything happens really quickly and you don't really have a lot of time to psychoanalyze what's going on and what you're feeling. You just kind of react on instinct, but, you know, there are a few options in the moment, and I think in the second it happened, first of all, Kevin Barrett, who's next to me, he just took off. Took off towards the shark, did an hesitate, but Cameron did hesitate. Because Cameron is not only a real estate guy. Cameron's actually this incredible swimmer, the fastest swimmer in this group of ocean swimmers. And also, a trained lifeguard who still works as a part-time lifeguard in Los Angeles. They put you through this rigorous sort of boot camp training, 200 hours over 10 weekends, like our academy, putting all kinds of ocean rescues. You know, they taught us an academy that slow is pro. Slow is pro, professional stop and assess. So yeah, there was that split second, but my head was just racing with all the scenarios,
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