Life & Death at Cape Disappointment

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chris D’Amelio, 49, who grew up in Aptos, wrote a book about his Coast Guard duty at Cape Disappointment, Washington State, with help from Reid Maruyama, 33, an Aptos High alum and his wife Courtney’s cousin.

The book came out in 2021, and the book tour was cancelled due to Covid. Life & Death at Cape Disappointment is full of drama. The 224-page paperback is $19.95 at Bookshop Santa Cruz and Amazon.com. Could a film be next? Mar Vista Entertainment has rented the rights for 18 months.

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Excerpt by Christopher J. D’Amelio with Reid Maruyama

Near 1400 hours (2:00 p.m.), my crew and I took the 23-foot utility lifeboat out for patrol. I had two other boat crewmen with me, both fairly new to the station and green, untrained. We were keeping watch on pleasure boats and fishermen around the Columbia River Bar when we got a call from the communications room about an hour later that a boy and girl had fallen off the cliff at the North Head Lighthouse a half mile north of the mouth of the river.

It was the summer of 2004. I was six years into my tour at Station Cape Disappointment in Ilwaco, Washington. I don’t remember the specific date — probably because I have chosen not to — and I’ve never felt the need to go back and find out. I didn’t know it then, but this case would be one of the last I would ever work out of Cape Disappointment for the US Coast Guard, and the one that pushed me toward my decision to transfer to Station Siuslaw in Florence, Oregon.

It was late summer, August or early September, near the end of salmon season. Hundreds of recreational salmon boats were out fishing past the Bar, where the water was calm and flat. By noon, the heat had burned off the fog and it was turning out to be a nice day, 70 degrees, not a lot of wind.

The summers in Cape Disappointment, Washington, are traditionally the busiest time of year, especially for the Coast Guard. In the off-season it is a quiet Pacific Coast fishing town, but in summer it becomes a popular tourist destination for vacationers who enjoy the water and want to fish and swim. This makes it the time of year when search-and-rescue stations are most active: Even though the weather is mild, anything can happen when hundreds of pleasure crafts and recreational salmon boats are out on the water, so we perform what is called a Recreational Boating Safety Patrol where we essentially drive around the Bar and up and down and along the coastline, watching, waiting, on standby.

Tourists and visitors are often unaware that the ocean never takes a break, even during nice weather. People underestimate it on beautiful days and are humbled by its immense power on stormy days. Those of us in the Coast Guard see it year-round and learn to respect and cope with its changing personality, from gentle swells to boat-busting breakers. And back in 2004, when the kids fell off the cliff, we Coast Guard officers at Cape Disappointment did our best to help everyone who underestimated the wind, currents, waves, and risks as mundane as slipping off a jetty. We had never considered closing the area to boats when the waves and currents made navigation treacherous; we just did our jobs the best way we knew how.

From the tip of the North Jetty to the tip of the South Jetty, the Columbia River Bar is two miles wide. The station at Cape Disappointment is located on the northern peninsula in Baker Bay, on the Washing- ton side of the river. The station’s geographical jurisdiction ranges about fifty miles along the coast, from Ocean Park, Washington, to Tillamook Head, Oregon, and fifty nautical miles out to sea. But when I was on patrol that day, the most significant event I had experienced happened right on the shore, under our noses, and its impact would reverberate through my life for many years afterward.

That day, we took the boat out of the harbor and around the A Jetty. We drove out to the Bar, right along the shoreline, where people were fishing off the rocks. The water was already crowded with boats, kayaks, swimmers, and surfers. Some children on the North Jetty ran after the boat, waving to us as we passed. Even though fishermen tend to have a lot of luck catching salmon here, it can be a very dangerous spot to fish. Walking on the large rocks that make up the jetty, people have been known to slip or get swept out to sea by a large wave. Over my seven years of service at Cape Disappointment, I can recall at least four or five cases where we pulled someone out of the water who had fallen off the North Jetty. At least two were floaters — dead bodies. One was a kid.

When we got the call about the boy and girl who’d fallen from the cliff at the lighthouse, we were patrolling a mile or so from the North Jetty, in the Buoy 10 Fishery, where most of the salmon boats gather in the summer. The watchstander got a phone call from either a park ranger or someone in distress. There wasn’t much information to go off of.

“This is UTL five-eight-zero,” I said over the radio. “Roger.”

“Looks like we got a couple people in the water,” Comms said. “Over by the North Head Lighthouse. Over.”

“Roger that,” I said.

“Looks like two children,” Comms said.

We were only about three or four miles away. I told Comms we could be there in five minutes. I turned the boat around and took it north up the coast along Benson Beach. I wasn’t worried or panicked. One of the things I’ve learned over my years in the Coast Guard and being put in difficult situations like this is that when shit does hit the fan, I stay pretty calm. No matter the situation, I can always focus my attention on the task at hand. Still, regardless of the training one has, or the years of experience, nothing is routine when a person is in the water, especially if it’s a child. This is one of the worst possible calls to get, one no Coast Guard officer ever wants to receive. Nothing is taken more seriously.

I got into the Coast Guard at the age of 19 because I grew up around the ocean and was tired of working dead-end jobs. I ended up staying because I was pretty good at it. I discovered I could save lives.

I had first arrived at Station Cape Disappointment six years and eight months earlier, on January 5, 1998. Those who serve in the Coast Guard know the reputation of “Cape D.” It is one of the most notorious units in the Coast Guard. The largest station on the Northwest Coast, it has 50 assigned crewmembers who take on more than 400 search-and-rescue cases every year, more than one a day on average. The station’s area of responsibility stretches along 50 miles of coastline, an area often referred to as “the Graveyard of the Pacific” due to the 20-foot surf, 30-foot seas, and 50-knot winds that lead to numerous wrecks every year. More than 2,000 vessels and 700 lives have been lost near the Columbia Bar alone.

Essentially, Cape Disappointment was where I thought I belonged. During my tenure at Station Cape D, I developed a kind of reputation. I became known as that guy—the guy who would go out on search- and-rescue cases when no one else wanted to go, when the weather was extremely hostile, the buoy measuring waves at over 30 feet. By the spring of 2000, I had received my qualification as a coxswain, and 15 months later, achieved the designation of surfman. By the end of my tenure, I became one of the service’s most highly trained and experienced boat handlers.

Becoming a surfman is a rigorous process that takes some people up to four years to complete. Most never make it. Of the 188 boat stations in the Coast Guard, there are only 20 that are located in areas with surf conditions that require surfmen, a qualification more rare than becoming an astronaut.

It is a dangerous job, one that requires finesse and calm in life-or- death situations. The surfman is the guy who drives the boat into 20- to 30-foot waves on search-and-rescue missions. He is responsible for the lives of everyone on board, as well as for whatever happens on a case, good or bad. By the time I left Cape Disappointment, I had been involved in over 430 cases and amassed over 2,200 hours of under-way time, operating on the Columbia River Bar. I drove boats into 70 mph winds; I towed fishing boats through storms; I rescued capsized boats from 20-foot waves. There was nothing else like it for me. I couldn’t get enough — the feeling of being out there on a case, in the rough surf, and getting back with everyone safe on board.

Not all cases are dangerous. Sometimes it’s the ones that might seem insignificant at first that end up sticking with you the longest. Even though this case of the kids falling from the cliff near the lighthouse was not the most dangerous or life-threatening, it is the one I still think about to this day. I’m sure most people who serve in a branch of the military and see action have a story like this. It is usually a single moment that changes them, for better or worse, even if it’s impossible to explain why after years of thinking about it.

The cliff at North Head Lighthouse is about a 130-foot fall with giant boulders at the bottom. The waves pound these rocks in winter and smash boats against the cliffs. There’s a reason for the lighthouse’s location: The rockbound coastline causes sea conditions that have endangered and wrecked hundreds of marine vessels for centuries, and the torrential force of the Columbia River obscures the view of the lighthouse on the south side of the river, two miles away.

When we got to the scene at the lighthouse that day, I looked around, scanning the water and the cliffs for the kids. I slowed the boat to a crawl. People had gathered up on the cliff near the lighthouse, standing on the railing, looking down at the water. I didn’t see a thing at first. Even in the calmest conditions a body in the water can be difficult to spot. I guided the boat slowly along the outskirts of the rocks, keeping a safe distance from the cliffs. Hitting one of these boulders would easily puncture the hull of the boat and capsize it, so I steered carefully around them.

Although I couldn’t see anything at first, I knew the kids were there somewhere. I heard them before I saw anything. At the base of the cliffs the girl was caught in an eddy in the rocks, where the water formed a kind of whirlpool. She was splashing and flailing her arms, screaming and crying. I slowed the boat down and got as close as I could without endangering the boat and the lives of myself and my two crewmen. I picked up the radio and let Comms know what I’d seen and what was going on.

“Station Cape Disappointment, this is UTL five-eight-zero,” I said. “I have a visual on the girl.”

I looked around for the boy but didn’t see him.

“Can you get to her?” Comms said.

They had to ask me twice because I didn’t hear them. My focus was primarily on how we were going to get the girl out of the water.

The situation didn’t look good. She was only about 25 yards away but still just out of reach of the boat. There was no way I could get to her. The waves were pushing her under and around in circles, farther and farther away and closer to the cliffs. She was yelling and screaming for help, thrashing at the water. I tried but couldn’t get the boat any closer. I looked around again for the boy but didn’t see him anywhere. I figured he’d fallen into the water and had already been pulled under the eddy, or else he was caught in the rocks somewhere.

“Five-eight-zero, do you copy?” Comms said again. “Can you get to her? How far away are you?”

“I’m about 25 yards away,” I said, “but I can’t get the boat any closer.”

“Can you get to her with a life ring?” Comms said.

I felt my heart beating inside my chest, like a fist pounding its way out, adrenaline reverberating in my bones. Those of us who work in maritime search and rescue know the feeling. There are rarely routine cases, and when children are involved, everyone’s heart rate is elevated a couple notches. Even though it takes years of training and qualifications to become a surfman, often in the field you have to be ready to do things you were never trained for—because things so often go wrong.

But that day, nothing went wrong. The conditions were good. There was no fog, so the visibility was fine. There was very little swell, and no wind. Even so, there was simply nothing we could do to combat the situation. It was bad, plain and simple. The waves and current were beating the girl against the rocks at the base of the cliffs. Her body was pinned. She was too far away to throw the life ring, and the 23-foot boat was too large and unwieldy to maneuver through the rocks.

Despite all of these factors, however, I still thought we could pull it off. I thought if one of my crewmen could steer the boat around the rocks I could make a swim for her. We were close enough to hear the waves that were slapping her against the rocks, her bones surely breaking, and I remember thinking that it didn’t sound like what I’d imagined.

I turned to my two crewmen.

“Do you think you can drive the boat?”

One said “No,” and the other, “I don’t know.”

I asked them again, not wanting to comprehend the reality.

They said no again.

I wanted to make the swim; I knew I could do it. Every bone in my body wanted to go in after her and pull her out of the water. She was close enough, just 25 or 30 yards away, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it safely without destroying the boat. We were too close to the cliffs, and I just couldn’t put more lives at risk by asking one of my crewmen to take the helm of a boat they didn’t know how to drive. I didn’t really care about the Coast Guard’s rule against leaving the boat; I would have done it if I thought it would have been possible to save her.

All of this meant we would have to leave the girl in the water. It meant we would have to stand there and witness her getting beaten by wave after wave until a helicopter arrived. I knew that the chances of this girl getting rescued alive were slim.

“Five-eight-zero, can you get to her?” Comms said again. “I think she’s too far,” I said.

The feeling of helplessness is what I remember most, years later. The children involved were not much older than my own.

“What’s the situation now?” Comms said.

I heard helicopter blades coming from the south. The girl’s cries for help were getting fainter, silenced by the waves. I stood at the helm of the boat, beating the steering wheel with my fist. I felt helpless and angry. There was nothing I could do — nothing more I could think of to do. I just watched, feeling useless. I watched wave after wave hit this girl and pummel her into the rocks, breaking her bones and filling her lungs with salt water. I watched until the helicopter arrived on scene, the noise of its rotor blades filling my ears.

“We’ve got a visual on the boy,” the pilot said over the radio.

The boy was hanging onto the cliffs. Apparently, he hadn’t made it all the way to the water.

“What’s his condition?” Comms said.

“He’s alive. He looks to be okay,” the pilot said.

“Is he in any danger?”

“No,” the pilot said.

The helicopter moved closer to the cliffs, getting into position over the girl’s body.

“We’re going to drop a hook for the girl,” the pilot said.

“Roger.”

By the time the helicopter had lined up above her, the girl was no longer screaming, no longer moving. Her body was limp, just floating there, getting beaten against the cliffs. I was sure she must be dead, or nearly dead. I was sure that any hope she would make it out alive was probably gone.

The helicopter circled the cliffs several times. I watched it drop slowly, then level off, then lower itself again, more slowly, inch by inch. By now, more people had gathered on the lighthouse cliff and were looking down, shielding their eyes from the sun and the dust kicked up by the chop- per. The rotors pressed down, vibrating the air and pulsating against the boat, flattening the waves. It sounded like a thrumming heartbeat heard through a stethoscope, a wall of sound drowning out all other noise. I heard faint voices coming in over the radio, but the sound was muffled and mostly static.

I didn’t understand anything that was said. Time slowed as I desperately hoped that somehow, the girl might still be alive.

The pilot lowered the helicopter a bit more and held there. The hook and cable were dropped from the cabin of the helicopter, a rescue swimmer coming down on the cable. When the helicopter lifted her out of the water, all I saw were her bright red shoes. It’s funny the kind of things you remember. Sometimes I remember only the sound of the helicopter; sometimes, nothing but the girl’s screams. Sometimes neither. But I always remember her red shoes.

“We’ve got the girl,” the pilot said.

“What’s her status?” I asked.

“She’s not breathing. We’re going to try to resuscitate her.”

I watched the people on the cliff lift their heads as the helicopter rose and the body of the girl was pulled up into the cabin. The water was still. Dust flew everywhere like pollen. Quiet settled around us and in the water. I looked around, realizing we’d been straining to hear the girl’s screams above the crashing of waves and pounding of rotor blades, but now it was over. I looked at my two crewmen, their faces a strange combination of shock and childlike disbelief, as if they couldn’t or didn’t want to believe what had just happened. It had only been about five minutes since we’d arrived on scene, but it felt like hours and hours had passed. In no other case have I ever felt time slow down quite like that, the weight of helplessness pressing against us, pinning our arms to our sides and our feet to the boat’s deck. I would think about these five or six minutes for years, replaying the scene over and over, watching it all happen in front of me, powerless. There was nothing I could do.

“That was a mess,” one of my crewmen said, breaking the silence.

I didn’t know what to say. I don’t remember saying anything.

I look back now and tell myself there was nothing we could have done differently. Several people have told me the same thing, and that I shouldn’t blame myself. They assure me that I would’ve only put more lives at risk if I’d made the swim for her. These words never help, though. I have blamed myself for years. I was in charge and therefore responsible; I knew that. That’s how it works in the Coast Guard. The fact that my crewmen didn’t know how to drive the boat has never freed me from the heavy burden of guilt I feel.

It was a no-win situation where one person has to make the decision to allow another person to die in order to prevent risking three other lives. How does one make that decision? How does someone, willfully or not, let another person die? That was the decision I made that day by not going after her. Was it the right one? I continue to ask myself that question to this day.

The helicopter pilot came over the radio to say he was going to bring the girl back to the helicopter pad at the station after he’d gotten the boy from the cliff. He said a police officer would meet me at the helicopter pad to pick up the boy and contact his parents.

I drove the boat back to the station, unable to think or say anything.

My part of the case wasn’t over yet, however. After I’d moored the boat in the dock, the police officer met me at the entrance to the station and we drove to the helicopter pad together. I braced myself to maintain my composure, trying to keep my mind blank as the aircraft landed because I knew what I’d see. This instinctive, self-protective mode might help to prevent long-term impact from an awful situation, but it didn’t work this time. As soon as I saw the look on the rescue swimmer’s face, I knew the girl was dead.

The girl was still inside the helicopter. She was lying face down with a blanket covering her. I noticed her red shoes poking out from underneath. They were red Converse. I didn’t know it then, but I would spend a lot of time thinking about these shoes over the next few years. I could never figure out why they bothered me so much. Now I think it’s because they seemed so out of place. They were so ordinary, so happy-go-lucky — shoes anyone could have worn, including my own children.

As the boy got out of the helicopter, the police officer guided him away as the chopper lifted off again to take the girl across the river to a coroner in Astoria.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked.

He was about 12 years old, but tall. He was Russian and didn’t speak English fluently, so we had some trouble communicating. He kept looking from me to the police officer and then back to me, appearing con- fused. He seemed to be having trouble understanding what was happening.

The officer turned to me. “I’m not telling him,” he said.

What do you say to someone whose sister has just died? I had never given this kind of news to anyone, and didn’t want to start today, especially with a 12-year-old kid.

“Where are they taking my sister?” the boy asked.

It was clear he didn’t know the severity of what had just happened. Either he didn’t get it or he was in denial, just trying to postpone acknowledging the inevitability of what he’d seen.

“Where is she?” he asked again. “When can I see her?”

My hands were shaking now. I didn’t know what to say.

Before this case, I will admit, I had been living high on a fantasy.

It wasn’t a heroic fantasy, but one probably many service members have had at some point: We all think we are invincible—that nothing can ever touch us. We think that all the violence and death we’ve seen won’t ever get to us. I truly believed that. Before this case, the sight of a dead body had never fazed me. I’d never gone to stress management sessions despite having pulled dozens of bodies from the water over the years. I thought nothing bad could ever happen to me.

This would be the first — and last — time I would ever have to give someone information like this, and I felt like crying. There is nothing worse than telling a 12-year-old child his sister has just died.

“Is she going to be okay?” the boy asked again.

I looked into the boy’s face. I thought of my own family — my wife, Courtney, my daughter, Taylor, my son, Matthew. The boy stared back at me without blinking. He seemed to be holding back tears. He seemed to know what I was going to say even before I said it. Maybe he was simply waiting for someone to give him permission to start crying.

“We’re going to get you to your parents,” I heard myself say. I paused. “Your sister . . . your sister — she didn’t make it.”

His expression didn’t change at first, but then it turned serious all at once. He kept staring at me, and I could see he was beginning to understand. Then he crumpled to the floor. I watched his shoulders heaving, like a painful swell. If he was crying, he was doing it so no one could hear him. The police officer helped the boy to his feet. He was crying less now but speaking in Russian, so I couldn’t understand a thing he said anyway. I followed them to the entrance of the station and watched as the boy got in the backseat of the patrol car. I don’t remember if I waved to him or if he waved back, if I gave him any words of comfort. I don’t think I did. I just stood there as they drove away, and never saw him again after that. There would only be a handful or so cases I’d run at Cape Disappointment after this, but nothing like this one — at least, none that I can remember now. Within a month, I would send in a request to my assignment officer for a new unit, and 11 months later I would be transferred to Florence, Oregon, along the Siuslaw River, a few hours south along the coastline. The Coast Guard Station there does not deal with nearly as many cases, and none as dangerous as those at Cape Disappointment. There, at Station Siuslaw, I would advance to chief, a command position, and would no longer be on the front line in those kinds of situations. I would no longer have to make the call to let one person die in order to protect others. I would no longer drive out into twenty-foot swells to rescue capsized boats, no longer save lives, though I would never really stop thinking about it.

One morning, a couple months into my new tour, I was running along the beach and thought of that Russian boy and his sister. It paralyzed me for a little while. I stopped dead in my tracks and had to sit down and let the feeling of anxiety and grief pass. I would never have guessed then how the memory of that case would live on inside me, casting a shadow over my life. My mind replayed the sounds — the awful feeling of listening to her drowning, the way her screams got quieter as if her voice were an object slowly shrinking until it became the size of a tiny grain of sand as it sank to the bottom of the ocean.

And I would never forget those red shoes.

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Photos Courtesy of Chris D’Amelio