Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
Luckily for him, one of those drivers somehow heard him yell for help.
Monday, the Coast Guard Commendation Medal was awarded to the rescue swimmer who dived into the stormy waters Aug. 3, 1993, and saved Weeks' life - Seaman Victor P. Kumalae.
Weeks had entered the water behind his Ocean View hotel room just before sunset for a summer evening's dip. A bit of a risk-taker, he had drifted a couple of hundred feet off shore, then the current caught him and the weather began to turn.
``I kept drifting out,'' said Weeks. On the shore, his daughter, Dawn, pleaded with him to come back to land. As he floated away, she ran back to their room to wake up her mom.
Debra Weeks ran down to the shore, looking frantically for some sign of her husband. He was no more than a dot and rapidly drifting out of sight.
After two hours, search boats hadn't found a thing. Weeks was a good swimmer, but he was losing strength. Winds were gusting to 20 knots, the seas were running 3 to 4 feet, and the squall was tossing him around like driftwood.
As the sun dropped below the horizon, he floated under the bridge's east span and grabbed a piling on the span's west side.
``I was hollering,'' he said Monday during the ceremony at the Coast Guard Station at Little Creek. ``The cars were going overhead, it was raining, and there was thunder and lightning.''
He held on for close to an hour. The barnacles on the piling cut his fingers badly. He was stung by jellyfish.
``I started swallowing water,'' he said. ``I knew I was gone. I just said, `This is it.''' He began to slip into a dreamlike state, he said.
He lost his grip.
A 41-foot Coast Guard boat - Kumalae's boat - had been one of the boats searching for Weeks. Two hours after Weeks first stepped in the water they got the message: A driver crossing the bridge-tunnel en route to Hampton had heard someone call for help.
As the boat pulled alongside the bridge, the crewmen heard a scream. They turned on a floodlight and saw a head and arm above the water, drifting toward the westbound span.
The boat couldn't fit under the bridge span. Kumalae, wearing a harness and tether line, dove in and swam toward Weeks. ``He kept drifting away from me,'' Kumalae said. It took him 10 minutes to fight through the choppy waves to get near Weeks, who was face-down in the water, floating between the two bridge spans.
The tether line was 5 feet too short. The boat crew released the line, and Kumalae reached the swimmer. He turned Weeks over in the water, shouting at him in an attempt to get him to start breathing as he kept him afloat. Kumalae, 6 feet 2 inches tall and well-built, struggled with the equally tall, 220-pound Weeks. Weeks began regaining consciousness and coughing up water.
They had drifted under and past the west span of the bridge. Another Coast Guard boat found the pair 10 minutes after Kumalae had reached Weeks. The boat carried them to Willoughby Bay Marina. Debra Weeks and Dawn were waiting, and Dawn was ecstatic. It was her birthday, and she kept thanking Kumalae over and over for saving her dad.
by CNB