Deputies are all about drowning prevention, which sure beats alternative

Deputy Shawn Baucom stood on an island at Modesto Reservoir on a June night as the search for a missing 11-year-old Keyes boy had to wrap up for the day because of darkness.

He heard a scream from shore, “clear as day, and I knew exactly – I didn’t have to ask what it was – I knew it was the mother’s wail because they told her, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, we have not located your son and we’re going to come back first thing in the morning.’ ”

“That’s why we bitch at people so much about wearing life vests,” Baucom continued as he and fellow Deputy Robert Beuttler of the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Special Vehicles Operations Unit patrolled Modesto Reservoir Regional Park by boat Sunday afternoon. “Because I would much rather cruise around … and educate people on safety stuff than look for drowned people.”

So that’s what he and Beuttler were up to Sunday – always the busiest day of the week at the reservoir in terms of day-use visitors – though rather than the word Baucom used, it’s more accurate to say the deputies “gently reminded” people they should wear life vests.

When not having to work drownings – there have been five in Modesto and Woodward reservoirs since April – education efforts are a big part of what the deputies on his unit do.

“We’re not big ticket writers,” Baucom said. They recognize that most of what they see people doing wrong – such as boats traveling too closely – isn’t willful lawbreaking but not knowing what’s allowed. When they pull over boaters, they often give them a booklet, “The ABCs of Boating.”

“Knock on wood, we’ve had no boating under the influence (that they know of) this year, and Woodward has had only one.”

That’s not to say drinking isn’t a problem at the reservoirs. “In general, it’s probably our biggest issue – people getting loud and unruly” as they drink, Baucom said. “If you took alcohol away from the reservoirs, there’d be no problems – aside from not having any attendance,” he joked.

In terms of water safety, though, not wearing life vests is by far the biggest problem, followed by lack of parental oversight and people overestimating their swimming ability (sometimes because of alcohol). “We’ve never pulled out a drowning person who was wearing a life vest,” Deputy Wayne Whitfield said.

As children grow into tweens, teens and young adults, absence of life vests often is because they think they’re better swimmers than they are, and they believe wearing them simply isn’t cool. Boys, especially, don’t want to be seen as the one kid who has to wear a vest, the deputies said.

They’ve encountered boys and men holding onto buoys because they’ve swum out farther than they should and are tired. They’ll make contact and offer help, usually to be told, “I’m OK.”

“If you’re hanging onto a buoy, you’re not OK,” Beuttler said.

When he thinks someone is refusing help because they don’t want to appear uncool in front of friends, Whitfield said, he’ll take that worry off their hands by ordering them aboard his boat.

Sometimes deputies need to shock people a bit, Beuttler said. “I may tell them I don’t want to have to be part of the group searching for them, or the one to pull their lifeless body from the water.”

The deputies’ prevention work is so important because reports of possible drownings often are made too late. It’s typical for reports of possible drownings to be made anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after the person was last seen, they said.

Sometimes it’s because the person was not immediately noticed missing. Other times it’s because family members and friends begin frantically searching but it doesn’t occur to anyone right away to dial 911. “All you have to do is get one person, get them on the phone and get us coming,” Baucom said. “Then you can go back to looking.”

Sometimes, people may worry they are jumping the gun by calling 911 right away. Maybe the missing person simply went to the restroom without telling anyone.

That’s certainly been the case, Baucom said, recalling an instance when a worried mother in Waterford called that her child hadn’t returned from a trip to the river. “I had the helicopter coming, I had firemen working the shoreline. ... The mom’s panicking, I’m trying to get descriptions, I’m relaying the descriptions . ... It got dark, I pull my other reservoir guy to help me. We’re spread so thin on this day, and the mom’s phone rings and it’s the kid. ‘We’re at the park. ... Mom, we didn’t go to the river.’ ”

Annoying? Not at all, Baucom said. It was the best possible outcome, because the kids were safe.

“Because pulling a body out sucks, doing positive identification with parents, that’s probably the worst part,” he said. When a missing swimmer goes from possible drowning to a recovery effort, that agonizing identification process is “the part you know is going to happen.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2016 at 5:22 PM with the headline "Deputies are all about drowning prevention, which sure beats alternative."