PANAMA CITY BEACH — Last October, the McDivitts of West Alexandria, Ohio, had the best vacation of their lives in Panama City Beach. There’s nothing like surviving a near-death experience to remind someone how it great it is to be alive.
Michael McDivitt and his 12-year-old daughter, Grace, were nearly killed when they were caught in a rip current right behind their hotel. They vacationed often in Florida, Charla McDivitt said, and the year before Grace had been stung by a jellyfish in the water near Miami.
Since then, she had been afraid of the animals in the water, and when the family saw rays in the surf on the day they arrived, Grace thought better of going in the Gulf. The water was calm that day, but on the morning of Oct. 1 Charla McDivitt was surprised to see yellow flags flying over the beach.
At noon, Grace and Michael McDivitt went into the water. A police report said they went in under double red flags, though Charla McDivitt thought they were upgraded later. They hadn’t seen any flags since the morning, she said.
“We never really stopped and read what each flag meant, so even if it had been red we probably still would’ve gone in,” she said.
Later she would see a plane flying up and down the beach, pulling a banner explaining that the double red flags meant the beach was closed, and they heard Beach and Surf Patrol trucks with loudspeakers admonishing swimmers out of the water.
“They kind of realized … they should make it clear to dummies from Ohio not to get in the water,” Charla McDivitt said.
But, that wasn’t clear to the McDivitts at noon. Grace went into the churning surf, which finally appeared free of aquatic life, and her father followed.
They were in water up to about their knees or mid-thighs and walking through the surf toward a dip where the waves were converging and crashing from both sides.
“As they went in that dip, the water just took them, and they were gone in a second,” she said. “I could see that they were drowning. They were just drowning.”
McDivitt stood on the sand trying to coach her family into swimming parallel with the shore, but the current was too strong to even do that, she said. She was afraid if she went in after them she would drown.
“I just remember the looks on their faces. … It was just the saddest look of — they’re going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it,” she said.
Someone already had called for help. The woman who showed up from Beach and Surf Patrol moved with a purpose. Despite Charla McDivitt’s panicked pleas for her to hurry, the patrol officer moved at a deliberate pace as she slipped into flippers, grabbed a flotation device and jumped into the water. A moment later, she returned and swapped the device for a surfboard and went back to the water.
The rescuer brought Grace and Michael McDivitt back to the sand. A local man had tried to help and gotten swept out, and the officer brought him in as well. He was hospitalized. Grace and Michael McDivitt went to the hospital, too.
They were out of the water about 10 minutes after they went in. The rescuer looked at the McDivitts like they were stupid, Charla McDivitt recalled.
“We apologized,” she said, to the officer for putting her life in danger.
Back home in Ohio, when the McDivitts tell their story, some people get scared and say they will never go in the ocean, but the McDivitts plan to come back to Panama City Beach in a few months, she said.
“Believe it or not, we think of it as the best vacation,” Charla McDivitt said. “Because after that, we just enjoyed it, and we were glad to be alive.”
‘We didn’t know’
Every year rescuers go into the Gulf of Mexico and save dozens of people who’ve been swept out by rip currents. In Bay County alone, one man drowned June 15 and another man drowned Tuesday. Beach and Surf Patrol pulled 22 people out of the water between last weekend, six of whom were hospitalized.
They return to their hometowns with stories similar to the one Charla McDivitt tells, but they don’t all recall their trips as fondly.
Cassidy Mrozek is a 16-year-old with a story to tell when she returns home to Illinois. She went swimming in the Gulf under red flags with her dad and a friend on the second full day of her visit to the beach.
When she was caught in a rip current last weekend behind her hotel, she didn’t know what to do. She tried to swim back to shore.
“All of a sudden the current and the wave got me, and I just kept getting pushed farther out,” she said.
Her dad tried to bring her back in and was swept out as well. Beach and Surf Patrol brought them both back in. Mrozek was exhausted and close to losing consciousness, she said. Shortly after she was rescued, the flag warning was upgraded to double red, she said.
“We traveled here and we didn’t know,” she said.
She’s “terrified” of the water now, Mrozek said later in the week.
“I go in there, but I don’t go no farther than 5 feet from the shore,” she said.