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On the Waterfront
Dr. 360 dies, the legend lives
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Kevin Cody
"Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he had a seizure. Or maybe he saw the tall eucalyptus trees and it looked good at the moment. It doesn't really matter. I like to think he's in a better place," Trish Peterson reflected after learning that her close friend Joe "Dr. 360" Wolfson had died Monday afternoon in a car accident.
The California Highway Patrol report is similarly non judgmental. "Party driving vehicle at an unknown speed eastbound on SR-90 (Marina Del Rey Freeway)...Driver allowed vehicle to veer right, off road, and down the dirt embankment. Vehicle struck a large tree...causing vehicle to spin and come to rest facing in a westerly direction. Driver sustained fatal injuries."
Dr. 360 had spun his final 360 in a Jetta. It may not have been his first choice as a way to die. But he had dodged the fate he told friends that he feared more than death - to spend his final days helpless, hooked up to tubes in a hospital bed.
From the time 32 years ago when the then UCLA student rented a 23rd Place garage apartment in Manhattan Beach, a block up from ocean, until last January, Wolfson had just two purposes in life - to help kids and to surf, preferably at the same time. When he wasn't working for the Carson's parks and recreation department, he was either coaching Manhattan Beach kids in basketball, baseball and volleyball or in the water.
Every winter he went to Puerto Escondido, the "Mexican Pipeline" to surf the winter swells in front of the home he built there on the beach.
He didn't smoke or drink. His obsessive concern for his health and appearance bordered on Narcissism. So it was particularly distressing to him that when he was in Puerto in January 1998 he developed a chronic cough. For six months after his return, doctors treated him for asthma, despite his protests that he could feel an obstruction in his chest. Finally a CAT scan revealed a tumor lodged between his lungs and his windpipe. It was inoperable. Doctors told him he would "bleed out on the table" if they tried to remove the tumor. They gave him a few months, a year maybe, before the growing tumor suffocated him.
It did grow. He had trouble breathing. He coughed up blood. Always thin, his weight dropped to 122 pounds. But still, he surfed every day and continued to work with kids.
One night in November 1998, he coughed up so much blood that he feared he was becoming too weak to surf, or to work with kids. Shortly after midnight, with the air temperature a biting 43 degrees and the water cold enough to produce an ice cream headache, Wolfson paddled out in his wetsuit on his "Dr. 360" signature body board. He surfed in the starlight for over an hour. With his body starting to shut down from the cold, he paddled out past the waves to a red buoy the lifeguards use for training swims. He looped his surf leash through the buoy anchor line, laid his head down on his body board and waited to die.
He had been in the water at least three hours when Tracey Geller, a summer lifeguard, spotted something glistening near the buoy. Geller was coaching the Manhattan Beach Middle School surf team. He paddled out to investigate, expecting to find a body board that had blown off shore.
Instead, he found an unconscious Wolfson. He gave him four quick puffs of air, four compressions to the chest, and then paddled him back to shore. Two more puffs back on the beach and Wolfson twitched back to life.
When Wolfson regained consciousness at Little Company of Mary Hospital, and realized he had been rescued, he went into a rage. He ripped the life support tubes from his body and railed at Geller for interfering. Four days later he paddled out again with the intention of killing himself. But the ocean spit him back to shore.
During his recovery, he read the "say it ain't so, Joe," letters written to him by the Manhattan Beach Middle School kids who had helped Geller pull him ashore.
The following week, he met with the kids to apologize for attempting to use the ocean he had taught them to love, as an instrument of death.
After a cover story in Easy Reader, the story caught the attention of the national press and Hollywood. The Los Angeles Times ran his story on the front page. Just about every news program, including "20/20" retold the story. Jimmy Manos, producer of the Emmy award winning "Soprano" signed Wolfson to a movie deal.
Half a dozen years ago he and his roommate, El Camino College football coach John Featherstone, had coached a team of fifth grade girls to the city softball championship. Now, six of those girls, including Peterson's daughter, were on the championship-bound Notre Dame High School volleyball team. Wolfson cheered them on at every game, including their state championship victory.
He arranged a 50th birthday party for himself at Planet Hollywood. Wolfson, who was notorious for self-promotion even before he got sick, appeared to be having such a good time with his celebrity status that people questioned whether he really was terminally ill.
He reinforced their doubts in December, months after the cancer should have killed him, by going back to Puerto Escondido for the winter surf. But he lasted only a few weeks. He injured his shoulder and couldn't paddle. He said he couldn't sleep because of the noise from a brothel built next to his home. In truth, the pain wouldn't let him sleep. He refused to use narcotic sleeping pills and had an allergic reaction to the non-narcotic sleeping pills his doctor prescribed.
His surfing days were over and he no longer had the emotional energy to cheer on his kids. Doctors told him the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver. Secondary infections were attacking his stomach and throat.
Last Thursday he told Peterson that his doctors wanted him to under go chemotherapy. He told her he didn't see the point.
"If he couldn't get in the water, nothing was going to cheer him up," Peterson said.
Saturday night he had dinner with Featherstone and a few close friends. When Featherstone helped him to bed he gave him a hug and promised to set up an appointment with his doctors on Monday. But Monday was President's day and the doctors weren't working.
"He was a proud man. He didn't want people to see him struggling," Featherstone said. "He was laying low, staying around the house. I told him he ought to get out, if just to take a drive."
A paddle-out memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Monday in front of the Marine Street lifeguard tower. ER