A unique Sunrise Rotary Club project featured in this newspaper in March recently played a huge role in saving a drowning man’s life at South Beach Park.
On that spring afternoon, the three lifeguards watching over South Beach had shuttered their lifeguard station and were hosing off their all-terrain vehicles at the end of their shift when a frantic woman ran up to them and said that a man was stuck in a rip tide and needed their help.
The lifeguard staging area by the parking lot is about 600 feet from the water, the length of two football fields. Shayne Roycroft, Travis Matschner and Anthony Hernandez took off immediately, sprinting through the mangroves to the beach. As they approached the surf, they saw man in the ocean 75 to 100 yards out, struggling to stay afloat in a churning rip tide…