Woman who saved boys’ lives honored by Red Cross
Christina Theiss dove off a jetty as two boys struggled in a current.
WEST PALM BEACH — Christina Theiss’ friend was snapping a photo of Theiss and her 4-year-old son Brandon on Mother’s Day on the jetty at Ocean Reef Park. The friend looked up from the camera and saw two boys struggling against an afternoon rip current.
“I think those boys are in trouble,” the friend said. “I think they’re drowning.”
Seconds later, the 36-year-old Hobe Sound resident was jumping off the rocks to save them.
On Tuesday, the Palm Beach & Martin County Red Cross honored Theiss, a former Red Cross lifeguard instructor, with its highest lifesaving award.
Theiss said the boys, about 14 years old, were within a body’s l e ng t h of t he j e t t y, i n s houl - der- deep water, but couldn’t get back in.
“I know any time there are rock formations like a jett y, there’s a strong rip current, and they went in a short amount of time from being chest-deep to shoulder-deep, and then one was hugging the other one. That’s when I jumped in. That’s the first indication of a double-victim rescue,” she said.
When she got to them, their heads were dipping below the water. They didn’t seem to know how to swim.
The current kept her from pull- About her rescue of two boys
ing them closer in, so she swam them parallel to the shore, holding her breath and swimming underwater while holding them above the surface.
Finally, she got to a point where she could touch bottom and was chest-deep. But without a life vest or flotation device, “I was so physically exhausted there was nothing I could do other than wait” for lifeguards to be summonsed from farther up the beach to help them all ashore, she said.
The boys were in shock, she said. “There was not one word spoken to me. I just kept telling them, ‘You’re OK, you’re going to be fine.’ That’s what happens when you get to that point. You go into shock. You get to the point where you can’t yell for help.”
Once ashore, she realized she’d dislocated her shoulder — both shoulders had been operated on previously — and had to call 911 for an ambulance.
The boys went off with the lifeguards. Theiss never did get their names. She wanted to offer them swimming lessons.
Theiss started working as a lifeguard when she was 15, swam in Division 1 for Duquesne University and worked as an ocean lifeguard when she was 22. Now she runs Swim With Gills, an American Red Cross learn-to-swim program in Palm Beach County, and she trains swimming instructors and lifeguards.