Parish president saves California woman

St. Martin Parish President brushes off 30-year-old lifeguarding skills during NACo Annual Conference

Like any good executive, Parish President Guy Cormier has to delegate to get things done, day in and day out, in St. Martin’s Parish, La.

Every now and then he has to roll up his sleeves and get to work himself, but recently, that involved taking his shirt completely off.

After his workshop programming ended while at NACo’s Annual Conference this July in Los Angeles County, he and his wife decided to take a trip away from the hub of county activity around the Long Beach Convention Center and see a little more of the state.

“Darlene and I hadn’t been to that part of California before, so we thought we’d look around a little,” he said.

By his telling, within 10 minutes off showing up on a pier, the couple saw a group of roughly 50 people looking over the edge, 25 feet down into the water, where a woman in her late 20s, fully clothed, was splashing around.

“You could tell she was weak,” Cormier said. “The waves flipped her over and she’d recover and try to right herself, then another wave would hit her.”

It appeared that her friends were trying to pull her up to the pier in a life preserver, a plan foiled by the height required to lift her, a mismatch between her and the life preserver, and her friends’ intoxication.

“I tried to explain it wasn’t going to work, but one of them told me to mind my own business,” he said. “I looked down but it didn’t seem like she had the strength to get out on her own, or even dog paddle, and the hole in the life preserver was so big she was going to fall out.”

After observing for another minute, Cormier gave his wife his wallet, phone, shoes and shirt and headed down a long ladder into the surf. Shortly after he started descending, the woman fell out of the life preserver and hit her chin on the ladder on her way back down.

“After a few rungs, I just took my feet off and slid down as fast as I could,” Cormier said. “I was down there in about half a second.”

When he reached the waist-deep water, the woman resurfaced and he reached out to grab her arm. After 10 minutes of calming her down, talking to her (she said her name was Megan, it was her birthday and her friend had pushed her in as a joke), and reassuring her that she would be alright.

“I was a lifeguard when I was 16 and taught water rescue into my 20s, but I’m 50 now,” Cormier said. “I didn’t think I’d be doing this again.”

They climbed the ladder together, step by step, dried her off and went on their way.

“She was 27, and she seemed like a bright woman who had a lot to look forward to,” Cormier said. “I don’t know what would have happened otherwise, but Darlene keeps telling me there’s a reason we were there that evening. It was just natural to try to help.”

In addition to serving as the president of St. Martin Parish, Cormier is the president of the Police Jury Association of Louisiana and is a member of the NACo Board of Directors.

Though Cormier was reserved about the feat, his friend, St. James Parish President Timmy Roussel, was making sure people knew what had happened.

“It is truly a miracle that Guy happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he wrote in an email. “I don’t want to consider what could’ve happened to Megan had Guy not been there.  His actions were truly remarkable and I commend him on a job well done.”