Lisa Peterson couldn’t open her beach chair, the first sign something was wrong.
Peterson, along with her then 14-year-old daughter, Haylee, and family friends from Rancho Cucamonga, was at Crystal Cove State Beach’s Moro Beach to enjoy a relaxing beach day last summer – but within minutes, everything changed.
Her left hand wasn’t working.
Peterson tried to take a sip of water, choking on the liquids and coughing it up.
“It was really hot,” Peterson recalled. “I thought I was just hot, dehydrated and that was it.”
Friend Jaclyn Parslow noticed Peterson’s face drooping and thought she might be having a stroke, shouting for their other friend, Julie Stewart, to get a lifeguard to help.
Peterson was on a race against the clock, with every minute passing possibly meaning the difference between being able to walk and talk, the difference between life or death.
A quick decision
State Parks lifeguard Niel Smith remembers having a relatively mellow day on July 10, but still busy with the usual summer beach crowds.
Lifeguards such as Smith, who is about to enter his third summer on duty, know what to look for while scanning the sand and sea. The most common threat is the ocean, with rip currents and waves that can suck an unsuspecting swimmer out to sea.
But lifeguards are trained to recognize all kinds of emergencies – even the unexpected.
When Smith saw Peterson’s friend, Stewart, running up to him as he sat in Tower 3 at El Moro State Beach, he said he knew it wasn’t the casual beach jog many runners do along this stretch of sand.
She looked panicked.
He immediately picked up his red floatation buoy, he said, not knowing what the emergency would call for at that moment.
“I think she’s having a stroke,” Stewart said, frantic.
The moment she said the word “stroke,” Smith put down his buoy and quickly made a call to dispatch, giving an early warning to emergency responders that they would need immediate transport to the closest Comprehensive Stroke Center.
He rushed to Peterson, now laying on the sand. He introduced himself and tried to calm her.
“The next thing I know, there was this kid,” Peterson recalled on a recent day. “He’s the last face I saw.”
No time wasted
The words coming out of Peterson’s mouth sounded normal in her head as she said them. But to others, her sentences were slurred, hard to understand.
She couldn’t see, but could hear everything as Smith and fellow State Parks lifeguard Carlo Silvestre hoisted her onto the rescue truck to rush her to the ambulance.
Peterson remembers feeling embarrassed that she felt the need to vomit. She also remembers the medics asking if she could raise her left arm.
She could not.
The ambulance raced through summer beach traffic to get Peterson to Hoag Memorial Presbyterian Hospital, met by doctor Avinash Mesipam, a neurointerventional radiologist and stroke specialist in the Comprehensive Stroke Center.
It is one of the county’s nine Stroke Neurology Receiving Centers, as designated by the OC Health Care Agency.
Stroke care has changed drastically over the past decade, Mesipam said, and there’s known procedures that can remove a clot out of a person’s brain – if they arrive in time.
“Each minute that time is wasted results in a loss of 2million brain cells per minute,” he said.
Between Hoag’s Newport and Irvine centers, an estimated 80 cases a year require a intra-arterial thrombectomy, a procedure in which doctors snake a catheter through blood vessels to extract a clot.
Peterson was one of those patients who was able to be saved by the procedure, in large part because of the quick-thinking efforts of friends, lifeguards and EMS responders. Two large clots on the right side of her brain were removed and she suffered no lingering challenges, mental or physical, that many stroke victims endure.
It was only 42 minutes from the time she arrived at Hoag to her blood vessel being opened, Mesipam said. In total, from when lifeguards got to her on the sand to clot removal at the hospital, the time was clocked at 72 minutes.
“You’re not able to do a procedure that quickly unless everyone has buy-in, and everyone knows what their job is,” Mesipam said. “And she gets to go to the beach another day.”
That day was Wednesday, May 15, when Peterson stepped foot on the same sandy beach for the first time to give a heart-felt thanks to the lifeguards who helped save her life, with her family, a team from Hoag and representatives from State Parks joining to witness the reunion.
As Smith and Silvestre got out of their rescue truck, she wrapped her arms around their necks in a warm embrace. They hugged Peterson’s teenage daughter, Haylee, too, both mother and daughter wiping away tears.
“I was just hoping for the best for you,” Smith said to Peterson.
“Just how great of a recovery she has had means that much more to us,” he added. “It kind of confirms we’re doing something out here and touching people and having an impact.”
Peterson commented how cool Smith, just 19 at the time, handled the pressure, how at such a young age he didn’t panic. She learned he is studying to become a nurse.
“You did a good job,” she said with a smile.
Hoping for the best
State Parks peace officer supervisor Danielle Snyder, also one of the seasoned State Parks training officers, said this was an incident that lifeguards train for, putting in hundreds of hours not just to learn about rip currents and beach safety, but emergency responses of all kinds.
“As a training officer, this is what I want to see,” she said. “It was just nice to see it all work the way it’s supposed to, from every level.”
And many times, they put a victim in an ambulance without knowing the outcome.
“We have a lot of question marks,” she said.
Most days, the people lifeguards help are able to go home from the beach simply shaken, other times more severe cases like Peterson end up at the hospital, their outcome unknown.
“You’re hoping for the best… You definitely think about it,” said Silvestre. “You don’t always hear back. It’s always really good to hear when things go well.”
Peterson said she has one stipulation for her next beach day this summer.
“I’m only going to the beach you’re in charge of,” she joked.
She added: “You’re not going to have to save me again, I promise.”