It was a late afternoon on Labor Day. An oppressive heat wave had driven droves of people to the beach; Brandt Andersen’s family, locals to the area, decided on El Pescador State Beach, the proximity to their home making it an obvious choice.
It was there, around 4:30 p.m. Andersen—a Malibu producer—recalled in a phone call with The Malibu Times, that his son Brodie helped rescue a drowning surfer.
The father-son duo had already surfed multiple times that day, so it was unusual that they were still there.
Andersen was sitting on the beach when a young man started screaming, “Help! He’s drowning!”
“I couldn’t see where it was immediately,” Andersen said. “I was worried it was Brodie. I ran and grabbed a big surfboard to get out [into the water].”
Andersen emphasized that if someone is drowning, they are likely to pull anyone near them under in order to gain purchase and pull themselves up. While certain that Brodie was a strong swimmer, he worried that something may have happened in the water.
By the time he ran over, he saw that Brodie had the previously drowning young man draped over his surfboard. The young man in question was very skinny and looked to be around 17-19 years old, according to Andersen.
“Brodie had his hands on his [the young man’s] face, keeping his face out of the water,” Andersen said.
Later, he found out that Brodie had been a distance away; there were two people involved—the victim and his friend. One of them was drowning, pulling the friend under while trying to get up. The latter was able to get his friend off and swim away, when he yelled for help.
Brodie had thought the two were fighting and had started paddling.
“[Brodie] got there just as [the young man] took his last gulp of water,” Andersen said, still in awe. “It’s phenomenal because…had Brodie not thought to come over, that kid would’ve drowned.”
Having been a member of the Utah County Search and Rescue Team for five years, Andersen understood the difference those few seconds made.
Seeing as Brodie was having a tough time handling the surfboard with the young man due to big waves, Andersen swam out with a foam-top surfboard.
Father and son put the victim on the board before paddling him back to shore to conduct CPR.
As they pulled him onto the sand, Andersen told someone else to call 911.
According to Anderson, after about 15 seconds of CPR, the young man spit out seawater. Afterward, he ended up throwing up three times.
The whole situation took about seven to 10 minutes in total.
Though the young man was responsive, he could not move his arms and legs. He kept mumbling “I’m so sleepy,” but Andersen would not let him close his eyes. This was still the case when the paramedics showed up.
The paramedics then got the victim onto a stretcher and carried him up the beach.
Meanwhile, the lifeguard in charge came to talk to the father-son duo.
Andersen treats the situation as something akin to a miracle.
“It was purely amazing that Brodie had been out surfing. He was surfing for the third time; it was a little unusual he was surfing that late,” Andersen said. “Had he not had the forethought to paddle over and drape the guy over his board…”
Andersen affirmed that Brodie was OK. Nothing like that had ever happened to the Malibu High student. He took a breath and went back to swimming.
The father recalled his son saying this: “Dad, I just had to get back in the water so that I could just let it go.”
The younger Andersen is a sophomore at MHS. He currently plays on their baseball team, runs in cross country, and—of course—surfs a lot.
Noah Gerrard, who was visiting friends on the beach and saw the incident, emailed The Malibu Times on Sept. 5, the day after the rescue.
“The man was so weak and limp he could not move his hands or his legs. It was not a miraculous recovery like you see in the movies,” Gerrard said in the email. “…I have no doubt in my mind that if not for this father and son, yesterday would have been tragic for the man they saved. Were it not for the kid risking his life to paddle over to that man and throwing him over his surfboard, he would have died. If his dad had not known CPR and reacted quickly, that man would have died.”
Two days after the rescue, Andersen talked to a lifeguard and confirmed that the young man was OK. Brodie had talked to the man’s friend, but the family hasn’t heard from either of them since.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department, Lifeguard Division was unavailable to verify details of the incident by the time The Malibu Times went to print.
“You can’t really teach a kid to react in these situations,” Andersen emphasized. “You don’t know what you’ll do until it happens—even as an adult.”
Correction: Sept. 28, 2017
An earlier version of this story misidentified the Search and Rescue Team that Brandt Andersen was affiliated with. He was part of the Utah SAR, not the Malibu SAR.