Lost and found in the sand

The Baltimore Sun

OCEAN CITY -- Perched at the top of his chair, the lifeguard swooped his orange signal flags, signing the letters of a little girl's name.

"S-A-R-A," said Crew Chief Ben Davis, interpreting the code from his spot several hundred feet down the beach. His sun-bleached eyebrows bunched in a squint. "S-E-V - she's 7. Her trunk color is ... blue."

And so Sara7Blue became the first lost child of this shadeless Ocean City Saturday. She would soon be joined by IsabelAbout4- Orange, Ian6Spiderman and Ashley4Pink, not to be confused with Annie4PinkPolkaDot, and many others. In the high season, it's not uncommon for 100 children to get lost in a single day on the 10-mile-long resort beach. About 2,000 of them go officially missing every summer: They get found by alert sun worshipers or the guards themselves, who pride themselves on never having lost a lost child yet. "After a while, they just stick out like sore thumbs," says Davis, a veteran of the beach patrol, which stations about 90 guards along the shore. "A lost kid just looks like a lost kid. You see him. You lock eyes with him. And you know."

The guards have practically made a science of reuniting families, watching the sand as much as the water for signs of distress and passing the same tidbits of information - the child's name, age and bathing suit color - up and down the more than 150 city blocks of beach. Along with flag signals, they use radio dispatches: brisk, extremely business-like announcements that cut through walkie-talkie static:

"Found girl on 7th Street. Name Haley. Age 6. Trunks blue. Carrying a purple bucket."

And yet, no matter how many children go astray in a day, each one is the star of his own drama of loss and recovery that unfolds in the slatted shade of a lifeguard chair.

Longtime members of the Ocean City beach patrol can look at a stretch of shore and tell whether conditions are ripe for losing children. The worst time is in late July and August, on scorching days when the beach is crowded, the sideways current is strong and high tide hits early, causing families to spread their towels farther back on the sand. Once the water retreats and the powerful current nudges swimmers up the coast, Mommy and Daddy are that much harder to see.

So the children drift.

Lost-kid scenarios also change with the demographics of the beach. In the southernmost part, popular with day-trippers and motel occupants, unaccompanied kids are often turned over to the guards before their parents know they're gone. In the wealthier northern end, where condos are owned and families tend to keep tabs on the neighborhood urchins, it's usually the parents who make first contact with the beach patrol.

No matter the section of the beach, fathers have worse track records than mothers.

"Fathers can tell you about every bikini on the beach, but they don't know where their kid is," says Capt. Butch Arbin, head of the beach patrol. "Some of them forget they even have kids."

At least one outraged mother has attempted to secure lost-child records as custody battle fodder.

On the other hand, all parents seem to underestimate the amount of ground a child can cover. Even little ones have been known to stray for miles, finally turning up in the dunes of Delaware. They almost always walk in the same direction: with the wind at their back.

The profile of these young vagabonds is difficult to pin down. Most are between the ages of 4 and 9, elementary schoolers who stay closer to shore, still uninterested in the adolescent flirtations transpiring farther out in the surf. Some lose their bearings by chasing seagulls or brightly colored bathing suit bottoms. One was described by his mother as "a dreamer."

Once in lifeguard custody, some kids are nonchalant, too intent on the soft-serve cones that they got lost buying. But others assume the lifeguards are strangers straight out of their parents' direst prophecies, especially when they are offered the lollipops many guards keep handy. These skeptical types take one look at the candy and run.

"Some of them run faster than I can," said Garrett Lee, a longtime guard. He recalled one stout 9-year-old who "tucked his chin and ran straight at me." Lee leapt out of the way and the rampaging child charged up the beach. When the next lifeguard in his path spread her arms wide to catch him, he plowed into her like a linebacker. She went flying; he kept on running.

"You never know what they'll do," Lee said.

Lost boy Nathan6Blue- withBatman appeared to be of a gentler temperament as he huddled in the shadow of the guard chair on a recent Saturday. In the plastic bucket beside him lay a single perfect oyster shell; perhaps finding it was the labor that had brought him so far from friends and family. Nathan appeared not to care about his treasure now. A tear slipped down his tanned cheek.

"Wanna come sit up on the stand with me?" asked Connor Braniff, 21, the lifeguard in charge.

The boy clambered up beside him. After learning how to signal "Hi" with the orange flags, he turned more hopeful eyes to the ocean, as though his mother might soon paddle into view.

It bears mentioning that at least one current Ocean City lifeguard is a former lost boy.

There are some children who seem less lost than left behind by their parents. Guards tell incredible stories, which they swear are true, of misplaced infants who were too young to walk, and a father who said to please call if his 12-year-old daughter ever turned up, but he really had to be getting back to Baltimore.

More often, though, parents are frantic, assuming that their children have drowned. They sprint down the beach; they faint; they return to their condos to have nervous breakdowns. They demand that the Coast Guard be called, that the depths of the ocean be scoured.

"For you it happens once, but for us it happens 2,000 times a year," Arbin often tells them, with the easy manner of a man who has spent the past 36 summers on the beach. The beach patrol claims to have reunited every family, and the guards try to guarantee that parents take home all the kids they brought with them, although it is apparently possible to leave with an extra or two: already this summer, a woman went into labor while sunning near Talbot Street.

Yet it was still hard to reassure Brooke Sweeley of Allentown, Pa. Her 7-year-old son, Aidan, had disappeared from his assigned spot near the family umbrella around 30th Street while she foraged for lunch sandwiches. She had left Aidan in the care of his stepfather, whose vast, impressively tattooed shoulder span alone might have been enough to keep many young explorers close to home.

When she noticed Aidan was missing, it was as though a streak of lightning had launched from the cloudless summer sky - the so-called "bolt from the blue" that lifeguards talk about - and struck her heart. Almost without realizing what she was doing, she walked toward the water, as fast as she could without running, scanning left and right. As she hurried past, other mothers rose from their blankets like startled pigeons from a pavement. They started looking for Aidan, too.

Now Sweeley waited for word of him at the base of the lifeguard stand, standing with another baby on her hip. She looked close to tears.

Arbin took his cue.

"For you it happens once, but for us it happens 2,000 times a summer," he said for what might have been the 2,000th time of his career. Sweeley tried to smile.

At last, news: An Aidan7White- withflowers had been discovered a few chairs over. Soon afterward the child materialized with a lifeguard escort, looking equal parts disgraced and delighted because kids who had seen him in a beach patrol vehicle had thought he was under arrest.

Sweeley pulled his small head against her shoulder.

"What happened?" she cried. "Why did you go so far? Couldn't you see where you were? Didn't you tell them you were scared?"

Then she said, "OK, you're back," as though that was answer enough.

A free hot dog and a soda seem to be the going reward for recovering lost progeny, but Sweeley just beamed at the lifeguards like the afternoon sun, now radiant overhead.

It was time to return to those sandwiches. She and her son headed back down the beach.

abigail.tucker@baltsun.com.

Copyright © 2021, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication | Place an Ad
72°