THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9607030726
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY WENDY GROSSMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 85 lines
HIS BEEPER goes off just after midnight. Ralph Ortiz hits the floor. In less than 60 minutes, he'll be airborne. Every third day Aviation Machinist Mate second class Ralph Ortiz is on 24-hour alert for the Search and Rescue team at Oceana Naval Air Base.
``Every day when I get up, or every time I have duty and my beeper goes off, I say to myself, `This is it.' This is what I've practiced all these years for,'' says the 29-year-old Ortiz. ``I'm prepared every day.''
The SAR team, in their gray H3 chopper, is a lot like the Coast Guard. Both get called out when a sailboat gets caught in 30-foot waves, or a jet skier has an accident.
``The difference between us and the Coast Guard is that their only mission is to rescue,'' Ortiz says. ``We are search and rescue - but we can be called out on any task that can come up.''
If a Navy helicopter crashes into the ocean, he's called. If a sailor has a heart attack or breaks an arm, Ortiz is called.
But it's not all adventure on the high seas. Sometimes the SAR team just delivers mail and cargo.
Ortiz spends more time training than actually saving lives.
On most days, his alarm goes off at 5 a.m. He hits snooze for 15 minutes more zzzzz and then stumbles into the kitchen and starts the coffee. After showering, he grabs a cup of coffee and then heads over to Oceana.
As work center supervisor, he reviews the plans for the day and makes sure they adhere to the flight schedule. Sometimes he's on the chopper that leaves to practice SAR procedures. Most days he's not. Rotating with 13 other crewmen, he only gets up in the air about five times a month.
The rest of the morning he's in the hangar training others and doing administrative work. If a chopper comes back with an engine problem, he fixes it.
On the days Ortiz flies, he dons his olive flight suit and enters the chopper either as a flight crewman or the SAR crewman. But even if he's not on SAR duty he keeps his black wet-suit ready in case the SAR crewman gets eaten by a shark, drowns, or, more likely, is injured.
Ortiz acts as a third pair of eyes for the pilot. He scans the ocean 150 feet below for wreckage and human bodies.
If he does see something, he calls out the course and direction to the pilot and the rescue team below. ``I make sure that they don't miss anything,'' he says.
If he's the SAR crewman, he throws on the heavy black wet suit. Listening to the constant whine of the chopper's blades, he readies himself to jump into the ocean.
Except in training, he's never made a jump.
But he's ready.
Ortiz spent six weeks at aviation school, eight weeks at SAR school and another week at survival school. He goes on practice jumps every four months. He's done three so far this year.
When he was a kid in the Bronx, Ortiz built model cars. He planned on working at General Motors like his father. But at 17, when he graduated from high school, he decided to follow his uncle and grandfather into the military. His father backed his decision and signed the permission forms. His mother cried.
Ortiz entered the Navy in 1984, and had his first SAR duty at Oceana in 1988.
In the last eight years he hasn't pulled anyone out of the water.
``Most of the time when we go out there, we'll search and we won't find anything,'' Ortiz says. ``We'll come up with nothing.''
He hates it when that happens.
``I feel like there's still somebody out there and they're still needing assistance. I feel hopeless and useless that I can't find them,'' he says. ``Sometimes we don't feel like giving up. We'll stay out there a lot of times until we don't have any more fuel.''
After those flights, Ortiz sits down at his desk and relives the mission, asking himself what went wrong and what should have been done to save the people.
``It clings to me for about a day or two,'' he says. ``When I first started it really bothered me. I lost sleep over it.''
He tries his best each day, and then goes home. At the door he snatches up his 1-year-old son, Andre, into a hug.
Tomorrow will be another day. And Ralph Ortiz will be ready. And waiting. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
When his beeper goes off, Aviation Machinist Mate second class Ralph
Ortiz says to himself, ``This is it. This is what I've practiced all
these years for.'' by CNB