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Bounce in his step is key to Vardeman of three boys
by Kevin Cody
Never in his 38 years as a Los Angeles County Lifeguard could Sonny Vardeman remember having screamed for someone to rescue him. But he did last Memorial Day weekend.
"I was yelling my head off. It was scary," the 63-year-old retired guard admitted after being presented with the Lifeguard Medal of Valor last Wednesday at the Redondo Seaside Lagoon.
Despite having retired seven years ago the Hermosa resident maintains a daily training regimen. Each morning he runs and swims from the Redondo Breakwall to the Hermosa pier.
On the Saturday before Memorial Day, Vardeman was jogging on the beach at Third Street when he saw three young boys being swept out to sea by a riptide.
"I looked around for a surfboard, or some other flotation device, but I couldn't find one," he said. He described himself as "feeling like Dirty Harry without my .357 Magnum" when he rushed into the water with his trunks and nothing else.
Lifeguards typically extend a "rescue can" to rescue victims. Otherwise, the frightened victims will attempt to save themselves by "climbing the ladder."
That Saturday morning Vardeman found himself playing ladder to the three frightened 8- to 10-year-old boys.
As he struggled to keep the boys afloat, he and the boys screamed for help. But if anyone heard him, they didn't respond.
"I was going up and down with them, bouncing off the bottom like a yo-yo. Every time I went down, they went down with me," Vardeman said.
Lifeguards weren't manning the beach towers because it was before 10 a.m. But fortunately, Captain Bob Schroeder and lifeguard Sean Lemm spotted the kids and Vardeman from the lifeguard headquarters on the Hermosa pier, nine blocks north of Third St.
Lemm raced down the beach in a lifeguard truck and Schroeder dispatched Bay Watch Redondo.
Vardeman estimated it was just three to five minutes from the time he reached the boys until Lemm and the Bay Watch reached him. He didn't want to contemplate the results if he had had to keep bouncing off the bottom any longer than he did. They say the legs are the first thing to go, and they're right, he observed. ER