Past Winners

I pulled the zipper up the front of my hazmat suit and readjusted my gloves before putting on the Protexus PX300 Backpack sprayer. For a moment, I caught my reflection in the recreation center’s locker room mirror, the same mirror where I used to adjust the red and white uniform I wore as Los Angeles City Lifeguard. At eighteen, I had traded in my fanny pack and whistle for a badge that read: Disaster Service Worker.

Now looking back on my five-year career in aquatics, there are many moments I hold with pride. I grew up in the Los Angeles area and entered the workforce at fourteen to support my family. My desire to become a lifeguard stemmed from my own near-drowning as a toddler. By sixteen, I was working as a pool lifeguard, swim instructor, and coach. I specialized in working with special needs children, infants and adults with water-related trauma.

To fund my education, I attended community college and worked full time. However, soon after transferring to UCLA, I was struggling to make ends meet. Determined to protect my education, I sought out a promotion through the 2022 LA City Open Water Academy, knowing the outcome would decide whether I could continue my junior year. For two months, I was pushed past my limits mentally and physically through demanding ocean, land, and medical knowledge competitions. As the only woman and youngest in a group of twenty men, I placed third. Securing this promotion is one of my greatest triumphs as it allowed me to become a first-generation graduate, laying the foundation for my current path as a second-year law student at Berkeley Law.

Yet even that achievement comes second to the work I did as a frontline worker during the pandemic. I had joined LA Aquatics intending to protect my community by educating on the significance of water safety. When the shutdown began, I found myself protecting and educating my community on a virus we were only beginning to understand. As hospitals began to overflow with cases, Mayor Garcetti established shelters for the unhoused population to slow the spread. Dressed in a full hazmat suit and armed with a bleach-filled spraying backpack, I worked twelve-hour shifts disinfecting shelters across the city. I performed tasks I never expected to encounter in the workplace as I watched coworkers and fellow Angelenos begin to disappear. I served as the shelter’s designated Spanish translator, troubleshooted the initial batch of antigen COVID tests on LAUSD children, and provided first aid to our most at-risk communities.

Whether it was a poolside incident or a global outbreak, I always prioritized the well-being of those in my care. Knowing that my expertise could play a critical role in dramatically altering someone’s life was the reason I chose to get up every morning despite the fear and lack of hope I felt. For that reason, serving Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic was, and remains, the most meaningful accomplishment of my lifeguarding career.

As an all-season lifeguard for the past three years, I have reached many milestones. My first audit passed. My first real save. My first promotion. Yet my biggest accomplishment in lifeguarding cannot be boiled down to a single moment. Rather, it’s a plethora of experiences that have together taught me what it truly means to serve my community.

One Saturday morning, I was lifeguarding the children’s pool when one of the boys, playing happily one moment, slipped into distress the next, splashing uncontrollably and gasping for air. I immediately activated the Emergency Action Plan and brought the boy to the nearest wall. This was a jarring experience for me and the boy, Edward. Shaken, Edward was ceaselessly apologetic as I filled out an incident report. Prompted by the experience, Edward came back every week, determined to become an independent swimmer. Today, he swims effortlessly, even teaching his younger sister. But whenever he spots me on the deck, he waves at me, showing me his swimming progress or thanking me for helping him that day.

Another time, I was working the Christmas Eve shift. Pool traffic was slow, and I wanted nothing more than to be home with family. Yet, on one of my downs, I was surprised to see several patrons making their way over to the guard office with a box of donuts. “We wanted to thank you, folks, for lifeguarding out here today and wish you a Merry Christmas,” they said, handing us the donuts. This simple display of kindness made my shift, reminding me that people appreciate my work, even if it seems to go unnoticed.

One winter day, the fire alarm went off out of the blue. As I worked to evacuate the facility, I found an elderly man in the locker room struggling to get dressed for the freezing cold outside. Still wet from a swim, he could not move as quickly as the other patrons, who evacuated promptly. I stayed behind and helped the man get dressed, even offering him to use my shirt as a scarf when we stepped outside into the cold. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, but the man’s gratitude for my help was unwavering. Ever since, he has greeted me at the pool and asked me how I’ve been.

So what do these experiences have to do with my accomplishments as a lifeguard? It’s not a single save, audit, or commendation. Rather, it’s every time a patron gets out of the pool and thanks me; every time a swim lesson student sees me studying at the library and waves at me with a smile; every time I see a parent from the pool at a grocery store that looks my way and says hi. My greatest achievement as a lifeguard is the relationships and trust that I have made in my community. Lifeguarding is more than a job; it has given me a sense of purpose and belonging in my community, and these moments remind me of why I keep coming back to pick up my guard-tube time and time again.

Working as a lifeguard for five years shaped me more than any other job I have had, and my most meaningful accomplishment wasn’t a single dramatic rescue—it was learning how to develop a deep sense of responsibility for the safety and well-being of others. My time on the stand taught me how to remain calm when chaos erupts, how to step into leadership when others freeze, and how to offer both confidence and comfort when people feel vulnerable. Those skills have become a core part of who I am and continue to guide me now as a law student.

Early in my training, my supervisors made it clear that being a lifeguard is not a role you can take lightly. You hold other people’s lives in your hands, and you must always anticipate the worst before it happens. Over the years, that mindset became instinctive. Whether it was watching a child struggle underwater or noticing a guest exhibiting signs of heat-related illness, I learned to act before a situation escalated. Every safe outcome—especially those where the swimmer never even realized they were in danger—felt like a meaningful accomplishment. It meant the vigilance paid off.

Of course, there were moments where my training was put to the test. I vividly remember one rescue involving a young swimmer who slipped beneath the surface after becoming disoriented in deeper water. It was fast, but subtle—easy to miss if I had let my attention drift for even a second. I reached him quickly, bringing him to the wall where he clung to the ledge, shaken but unharmed. Afterward, I stayed with him, helping him slow his breathing and reassuring his worried parents. In that moment, I realized that the job wasn’t just about pulling someone from danger—it was also about restoring their sense of security. That human connection mattered just as much as the physical rescue.