Flying low in a Coast Guard helicopter, and knowing from experience that the success of their mission might be a longshot, Luke Singer and his crew suddenly spotted what they’d been seeking: a man floating in the ocean on his back, clad in a green life-jacket — more than 12 hours after he’d gone missing after falling off a personal watercraft near Long Beach.
The crew was miles away from where the 53-year-old man had last been seen on Sunday, Aug. 16, so they circled back to confirm it was him.
It was.
But still hovering above the sea Monday morning, the copter’s crew couldn’t tell if the man was alive. Then they saw his arm nudge — a small sign that meant it was “go-time” for Singer, who urgently was lowered into the water on a cable, beneath the spinning blades of the helicopter, ready to swim to the man.
“It’s pretty exciting, because a lot of times, you don’t ever find someone in person in the water cases,” Singer said in an interview Wednesday.
Singer, an Aviation Survival Technician, Second Class with the U.S. Coast Guard, was the rescue swimmer who rescued Paul Anthony Carbullido Jr. about three miles south of Seal Beach Pier on Monday. Carbullido had been at sea for over 12 hours after falling off of a personal watercraft device he had rented near Rainbow Harbor.
Carbullido and his roommate, Donna Durba, had rented watercrafts and both fell off near the Queens Gate Entrance Channel, according to NBC4 and the Long Beach Fire Department.
Durbay was rescued Sunday night near a break wall in Long Beach after swimming for around an hour, when a good Samaritan reported seeing a woman stranded. She feared the worst about her roommate’s fate.
“I left the hospital, and I came home, and I just thought he was dead,” Durbay told NBC4. “I was really, really scared.”
But Monday morning, the Coast Guard helicopter found Carbullido alive, more than two miles from shore.
Knowing the man they were searching for had been in the water for roughly 12 hours, Singer said medically, he knew they would be looking at almost confirmed hypothermia.
“I was there all night, like just, just thinking of the worst. I didn’t know which direction to go because it was real dark, you know? And I was just paddling, paddling,” Carbullido told NBC4.
After 30 minutes flying over to the area from San Diego, the helicopter crew searched for about 30 minutes before the helicopter’s co-pilot spotted Carbullido in the water, laying on his back.
When they saw Carbullido nudge his arm a little bit, indicating he was alive, Singer was immediately sent down on a cable. He disconnected from the cable into the water and swam over to Carbullido, who was hypothermic, but uninjured.
“He was able to move and still kind of talk to me and then you could tell he was deteriorating, just all that stress. He must have just had a big adrenaline rush when he finally saw someone come pick him up,” Singer said.
Carbullido was then put into a rescue basket, a giant metal basket, and sent up into the cabin of the helicopter, Singer said.
“Oh, man, there was relief,” Carbullido told NBC4 of his reaction to being rescued. “I was like, if there’s a God out there, there was relief. I can’t describe it. I was ready to give up.”
Once in the helicopter, the crew turned up the heat and covered Carbullido with wool blankets to warm him up after so many hours in the water.
“Even though the water is 75 degrees, if you’re out there with no wetsuit or no drysuit keeping you warm, you just lose body heat consistently all night and there’s no way for you to regain it,” Singer said.
The Coast Guard crew immediately brought Carbullido to land to receive medical care.
Carbullido was hospitalized, but recovering as of Wednesday, he told NBC4.
“It was a good case and I was happy with it. It makes me happy knowing someone is able to go home,” Singer said.
To search for people in the water, the Coast Guard’s operation center builds a flight pattern for helicopter crews to search along. In this case, a “perfect search pattern” helped Carbullido be found so quickly once the helicopter was in the air, Singer said.
“They’ll do all the math of plotting currents and tides, so the most likely place we’ll find them [a person in the water,” Singer said. “And sometimes, I’ve done six, seven hour searches before.”
The Coast Guard said the situation highlights the importance of wearing a life jacket, with Lt. Cmdr. Jason Caprioli, search and rescue mission coordinator, Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach calling doing so “the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself.”