Book tells tales about heroes of the sea

In April 1993, two brothers walking near Oregon's Tillamook Bay were washed off a cliff by rogue waves, then trapped and pummeled against rocks by frothing, 12-foot waves in a 125-foot high, 225-foot wide sea cave.

The challenge to save them was so daunting for the crew of the Coast Guard HH-65A Dolphin helicopter that before entering the cave, the rescue swimmer, Tristan Heaton, radioed the crew:

"If I don't make it out of here, could you please tell my kids I love them."

So begins one of 14 tales of the Coast Guard aviation crews and their rescue swimmers interviewed by Martha LaGuardia-Kotite in her first book, taking its title from the rescue swimmers' motto, "So Others May Live."

The elite but largely unknown Coast Guard rescue swimmers have come into the spotlight recently with the Kevin Costner movie "The Guardian."

LaGuardia-Kotite's book offers the facts, not the fiction, of rescue swimmers

"Tristan's story was the inspiration," said LaGuardia-Kotite, public affairs officer with Seattle's Coast Guard District 13 in the mid-1990s.

Now a reservist and rearing a family in New York, LaGuardia-Kotite is promoting the book she wrote in her spare time. She aims to donate part of the proceeds to help the Coast Guard develop a training pool for rescue swimmers, replacing the 60-year-old one now used in New Jersey.

Long before Hollywood planned its movie, Heaton's story, in which the helicopter crew flew into the cave and made its successful rescue, led LaGuardia-Kotite on a four-year quest to find the aviation crews, learn what makes them tick and have them tell their largely unknown tales

Several pioneers of the Coast Guard's 21-year-old rescue swimming team program, including some featured in the book, live in the Puget Sound area:

Former Master Chief Aviation Survivalman Darell Gelakoska, 59, and retired in Issaquah, was "Top Fin" in the early 1990s, so-named as the only senior operational rescue swimmer at the time. Gelakoska in 1991 spearheaded creation of the Coast Guard's advanced rescue swimmer school near Astoria.

Kelly Mogk, the first woman to graduate, in 1985, from the tough rescue swimmer school -- which averages a 40 percent attrition rate, failure higher even than for the notoriously challenging Navy SEAL program. She is now Lt. Cmdr. Kelly Larson and a rescue helicopter pilot in Port Angeles.

Mario Marini, now 48 and retired to rear a family in Olympia, spent 21 years in the Coast Guard, 16 of them in aviation search and rescue. He attended Coast Guard rescue swimmer school in 1985, the first year the Coast Guard's initial rescue swimmer training school, now in Elizabeth City, N.J., was established.

Coast Guard rescue swimmers began at the Navy rescue swimmer school Pensacola, Fla.

Navy swimmers were trained to rescue air crews in a military environment. Coast Guard swimmers needed to rescue civilians from sinking ships or the sides of rocky cliffs, in 50-knot winds or 40-foot seas and often at night.

So began the advanced rescue swimmer school in Astoria, a perfect geographical site, Gelakoska said.

As a senior enlisted man and underwater escape instructor, Gelakoska might have been grandfathered in as a rescue swimmer. But in 1991 he chose instead to earn his title as the only senior non-commissioned officer to undergo the training. He was 44.

Though he was a good swimmer from growing up in the Great Lakes region, Gelakoska prepared well but found the training school "the toughest thing I ever did in my life. I knew I could make it because I had the idea I could not fail. I could do whatever these young kids could do," Gelakoska said.

Larson, meanwhile, almost left the service in 1989, gun-shy after the publicity tour on which she was launched. Already the first female rescue swimmer, she was thrust into the glare of national publicity after her tenacious duel with the sea off Oregon's coast in January 1989, saving the life of a downed and injured Oregon National Guard fighter pilot.

"She was only 110 pounds saving a guy over 240 pounds, parachute-strapped and trying to wrestle him with his sinking parachute," Gelakoska recalls. "It was phenomenal."

"We have macho Coast Guard guys at times who think women shouldn't be doing this work," he added, "but Kelly showed them it wasn't true."

Larson declined to be interviewed for this story, continuing to avoid the glare of publicity.

LaGuardia-Kotite scored what might be Larson's last public interview, however. "What gave me my determination was everybody telling me I was going to fail," Larson told her.

Marini, meanwhile, after completing initial training in New Jersey, was in the second class through Astoria's advanced school in 1995.

Like others, Marini participated in hundreds of rescues over his career.

Yet today he keeps nearby a "thank you" note for one of his final missions, one on the Great Lakes. A man in a kayak near Detroit had been run over by a powerboat, the propeller shredding his legs. Marini found him in shock, crippled and bleeding to death in the water.

The look in the man's eyes seemed to say "God, just help me," Marini recalls.

Yet, "he lived and learned to walk again," Marini says, his voice softening. "It means a lot to know I made a difference in that man's -- in his family's -- life."

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