Never too late to say thanks

COEUR d’ALENE — Thirty years ago, a lifeguard saved Allison-Buffy Bishop at Beaver Bay at Farragut State Park.

While she is forever in his debt, she has one regret. She never thanked him.

“I don’t think I said anything to him,” Bishop said.

She hopes to get that chance.

The San Diego woman is beginning a search to find that lifeguard, just a teenager, maybe 16 or so, who responded so quickly on that summer day. He swam out and grabbed the young girl after she sank beneath the surface in 1989 or perhaps 1988. It doesn't matter now.

What matters is, she wants to let him know she appreciates what he did.

More than he knows.

“I just want to tell him thank you for being attentive,” she said Friday in a phone interview with The Press.

Today, Bishop has a daughter, 10, and a son, 15. They swim, surf, skateboard and snowboard. The youngest is close to the age when Bishop nearly lost her life.

Bishop has family in North Idaho and her parents live in Bayview, so they still visit around the Fourth of July each year.

But three decades go, while visiting from Southern California in July or August, Bishop, 8 or 9 years old, nearly died while on an outing to Farragut with family.

She and a cousin were on a raft at Beaver Bay, in the deepest part, and Bishop decided to swim for shore, some 25 yards away.

A strong swimmer, she set out and hadn’t gone far when fatigue suddenly set in. Perhaps it was the cold water that sapped her strength. She’s not sure. She just knows she was exhausted and no one seemed to notice as she splashed around.

“I couldn’t move anymore,” Bishop recalled. “I thought, ‘I’m going to go underwater.’”

She did.

As she sank, she looked around and saw the lifeguard — she believes the only lifeguard that day with many people milling about, standing on the beach, looking in her direction. She waved as she went under.

“I remember I looked at him, and it looked like he had been watching me for a while. When I waved, that’s when I saw him run into the water.”

She couldn’t get back to the surface and hoped she wasn’t sinking too far or too rapidly to be found in the dark waters below.

“I couldn’t get up,” she said. “I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t have come back up."

Bishop recalled “feeling peaceful.” She wasn’t scared

The lifeguard was suddenly there. It had to be about a minute, Bishop said. He reached down, grabbed her, pulled her up to the surface, and swam to shore.

“It was very quick,” she said.

About then her mom and others in the family noticed the commotion and realized the lifeguard had rescued Bishop. There was a lot of hugging and tears of joy.

“I was fine,” she said.

The relieved family soon packed up to leave. Bishop said she didn’t run back to thank the lifeguard and didn't know if her mom said anything, either. She wishes she had.

“He saved me so quickly that I never lost consciousness. Unfortunately, my family and I didn’t get the lifeguard’s name or information," she wrote to The Press.

While more summers would come and go, and she would return to Farragut State Park to swim, mostly at Buttonhook Bay, she never saw that lifeguard again.

She hopes to somehow find him. Because what happened that day so long ago has remained with her.

“I always thought about it,” she said.

Farragut State Park referred a Press call about any records of who might have been that lifeguard back then to a state office in Boise. A message left there Friday was not returned.

With kids of her own now, Bishop is grateful for those who look after them, including lifeguards.

“I’m happy to have someone paying attention,” she said.