THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 21, 1995 TAG: 9506210518
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
A jet skier who nearly drowned off Chick's Beach on Sunday left Virginia Beach General Hospital on Tuesday.
Daryl Smith, 27, was found floating face down in the Chesapeake Bay by a fishing party after he was knocked unconscious in a jet ski accident. The fishermen resuscitated Smith and took him ashore, where he was taken to the hospital.
One of the rescuers, Ronald Silverman, visited Smith in the hospital earlier this week.
``All I could do was thank him, thank him, thank him,'' Smith said in a telephone interview from his hospital bed on Tuesday before being released. ``I was really lucky someone was looking out for me.''
The fishing party spotted Smith's unmanned two-seat Sea Doo jet ski in the water as they were returning to Lynnhaven Inlet. They used binoculars to look for the skier. When they found him, not swimming as they expected but floating in the water, they rushed to his aid.
Smith was not breathing and had a very weak pulse when they dragged him aboard. Drew Silverman, a 20-year-old carpenter, cleared the man's airways and administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Although Smith regained consciousness before reaching the hospital, he said, it was Monday before he found out what had happened to him.
``They told me about the rescue and the newspaper article and I was totally stunned,'' said Smith, a boat mechanic with Ocean Marine who has lived in Virginia Beach since 1988. He's a native of New Jersey and a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps.
``I have absolutely no memory of what happened out there. I fell off the jet ski once and got back on. After that, it's all a blank.''
KEYWORDS: RESCUE ACCIDENT GENERAL by CNB