Good deed goes unpunished in Pacific Beach

New surfboard offered after man is rescued

The guy didn't want commendations. He didn't want his picture in the newspaper. All he wanted was his surfboard back.

The surfboard, in all probability, is gone for good, but not to worry. Dustin Lackey – the surfer who saved a man from drowning only to realize that someone had ripped off his new board – got word yesterday that a private company had volunteered to buy him another one.

And that wasn't all. The mayor held a news conference in Lackey's honor. The 21-year-old Mesa College student found himself inundated by interview requests from the media. Rep. Brian Bilbray called to offer praise and condolences.

The man whose life Lackey saved spent yesterday undergoing surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla to repair a broken spine. Ronald Williams, 39, who had been drinking whiskey before deciding to dive head-first off the Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, has lost feeling below his chest, San Diego lifeguard Lt. Andy Lerum said.

Williams, who is unemployed and homeless, apparently had no intention of killing himself. He simply didn't realize the water was so shallow, Lerum said.

Meanwhile, at the news conference near the pier, Lackey looked somewhat dumbfounded as he stood at a wooden podium, surrounded by Mayor Jerry Sanders and other public officials.

“This is flabbergasting,” said his mother, Jeannie, 48, a Carlsbad nurse who drove down to Pacific Beach for the ceremony. Her son is “a typical 21-year-old kid,” she said. “He just wants his board back. He doesn't care about all this other stuff.”

Lackey's whirlwind 24 hours began Sunday afternoon, when he and his buddies were surfing near the pier. All of a sudden, they saw Williams plunge into the water “penguin-style,” head-first, hands at his side. When Williams failed to surface, Lackey and his friends paddled over and discovered that the man was unconscious, bleeding from his head and barely floating.

Ditching his board, Lackey held Williams' head above water until lifeguards took over. When Lackey returned to shore, he realized his surfboard had vanished.

It was a nice board, too – a $700 John Carper epoxy Peter Mel Machine. His mother, grandmother, aunt and uncle had pitched in so Lackey could buy it for his 21st birthday two weeks earlier.

Appalled that someone would steal her son's board after all he'd done, his mother sent an e-mail to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which ran an article in yesterday's paper. The story was picked up by numerous radio and television stations, and Cox Communications stepped forward to pay for a new board.

At the news conference, the mayor congratulated Lackey and his surfing buddies – Travis Collings, 22, and Torrey West, 20 – for their “act of heroism.”

Lackey stepped to the podium, fumbled for a few words, thanked everyone for coming and said he hoped the injured man would be OK.

“I'm kind of flustered with all these cameras here,” he later confessed.
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Alex Roth: (619) 542-4558; alex.roth@uniontrib.com

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