Save a sea turtle? Awesome.
To save another person’s life? Preeminent. Momentous. Priceless.
“It’s one of those things, you just do. We didn’t even think about it,” said sea turtle activist John Schimkaitis of himself and another beachgoer on saving a struggling swimmer in the Gulf of Mexico.
Schimkaitis, one of 92 volunteers and a section coordinator for the sea turtle beach patrol for Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch & Shorebird Monitoring, is known among turtle watchers as “Digger John.”
He was patrolling on the beach June 10 in Anna Maria near Palm Avenue.
At about 7:30 a.m., he’d finished his search on the shore for sea turtle nests and crawls in his section of beach.
He was headed south from Pine Avenue, looking to help other AMITW volunteers, when he saw a woman “waving frantically.”
As he reached her on the beach, she explained Austin Lowry’s plight.
He recognized Lowry as a beachwalker who took a swim many mornings in about the same location.
“But this time, he got out there and couldn’t swim against the current. He just didn’t have the strength,” Schimkaitis said.
Gene Samsel arrived and seeing Lowry’s distress beyond the swin buoys, the two men held a quick discussion about needing a floatation device to assist with the rescue as they entered the water. They decided to immediately swim out because “he needed help now,” Schimkaitis said.
When they’d almost reached Lowry, emergency workers arrived.
Samsel continued swimming to Lowry and Schimkaitis returned to shore, grabbed a life jacket from the EMS worker and swam back to assist Samsel and Lowry.
He and Samsel fitted Lowry inside the jacket and “each grabbed an arm and swam him to shore.”
The two men then carried Lowry, who was losing consciousness, to the awaiting EMS personnel on the beach.
Schimkaitis said Lowry “took in a lot of water,” and may have had medical difficulties, but acknowledged, “I’m not a medic. I’m an accountant.”
EMS transported Lowry to Blake Medical Center in Bradenton.
Lowry is now at home recovering, Schimkaitis said.
“Austin would have done the same thing for us,” he added.
AMITW executive director Suzi Fox said, “My people know what to do in emergencies for turtles or humans.”