As consumers of American entertainment, we are well-versed in heroic action. A hero runs into a burning building to rescue a child. A hero administers lifesaving CPR to save a heart attack victim. A hero tackles a gunman before they can take the life of an innocent bystander.
I had a chance to interview a hero on my show recently, and he doesn’t do, nor has he done, any of those things. In fact, he doesn’t save lives at all.
His name is Juan Heredia, and he rescues the dead.
Yes, I know that is a contradiction in terms. After all, the dead don’t need rescue. Or so I thought. After talking to Heredia, I now understand what he’s understood for decades. “I don’t recover bodies,” he told me. “I recover someone’s son or daughter.”
And in that quote, you too can understand what he does and why he does it.
Heredia is the founder of the nonprofit Angels Recovery Dive Team and his work is spelled out in the name of his organization. He dives to recover drowning victims – people who are no longer alive, but people who are so important to those among the living.
“My purpose in life is to rescue sons and daughters throughout the USA,” he told me. “When I am under the water, I don’t see a body. I see a son or daughter I have to bring back.”
And bring them back he does. He’s found more than a dozen drowning victims throughout Oregon and other locations.
Critical role
It’s important to understand Heredia’s place in this tragic, yet vital, act. He’s not a first responder – he’s in many ways a last responder. First responders such as search and rescue and sheriff deputies are there for the living. They dive and search to find people that have been washed away and cling to life. Yes, they recover bodies of those that couldn’t be saved, but their overarching goal is to return both those that need rescue and those doing the rescuing safely to shore.
Heredia, who is a dive instructor and teaches dive safety to others, disregards basic safety when it comes to recovery. “My diving is not conventional. What I do is by myself and has nothing to do with safety standards. I dive in rapids and in zero visibility.”
And he has pushed himself to limits that are far beyond what conventional diving safety dictates. “When I was searching for a lost baby in the Siletz River, it was very cold and I kept extending my search by giving myself 30 minutes, then another 30 minutes. It took more than two hours, but I found who I was looking for.”
Another challenge Heredia faces often has nothing to do with the water, currents or temperature, but rather the official rescuers who are there to do their job. These are often paid professionals or highly trained volunteers who work at the direction of agencies like the sheriff’s office.
Heredia works for himself and his organization and he works for free. And sometimes, that can rub officials the wrong way.
“They have a very good reason to be upset with me,” he said. “They have a budget and they raise funds for boats and equipment and staff. And here is this guy doing the search for free. It doesn’t look good to their bosses. But at the end of the day, I’m there for the family to bring their loved-one back.”
So, oftentimes, he has to wait patiently until the official team has left and done all they could do, before he starts the lonely and difficult job of immersing himself into a cold river or lake to look for someone who is stuck somewhere in the depths.
The last question I asked Heredia was to explain how he can make the best of a terrible situation. In other words, in a job with no joy when he fulfills his promise to a family – what can he get from succeeding in his truly sad vocation?
“That is the hardest question to answer,” he told me after a long pause. “But if you see the family, in that moment … in that moment they are happy. They are happy that their baby is back. And for a moment I’m happy. But I know that after I hand them their loved one, I’m going to drop and I’m going to cry and it’s going to be a bad day for me.”
Yet, day after bad day, Heredia keeps showing up to terrible scenes of anguish and heartbreak. He shows up because someone with his skills and determination needs to show up and bring a son or daughter home to a family sick with grief.
It’s never a Hollywood ending, and the hero doesn’t save the day – but a hero entered the water on that bad day to try to help.
Michael Dunne hosts “Oregon on the Record” on KLCC. He’s a regular contributor to
The Chronicle.
