As a 9-year-old, she was saved at sea. Thirty-five years later, she reunited with her rescuers
LOS ANGELES — She had been drifting in the cold Pacific water for a night and most of a day.
Kept afloat by her orange life jacket and the bow of her family's capsized boat, 9-year-old Desireé Rodriguez had watched helplessly as one family member after another let go of life.
First her mother began foaming at the mouth and then went still. Her 5-year-old sister died soon after. Her uncle went next, followed by her aunt.
Now she was alone, with no idea where her father was. He'd been at the helm during what started as a routine fishing excursion on the family's boat. Soon after it flipped over, miles from land, he had insisted on trying to swim for help through the dark and thick fog.
Just as Desireé, too, began to give up, the skipper of a commercial sportfishing boat spotted an orange smudge bobbing in the water through his binoculars. Within minutes, the boat's first officer had leapt into the water and was grabbing Desireé's life jacket, pulling her back toward the boat — and toward life.
The crew radioed the Coast Guard, then transported the girl back to San Pedro, where medics wheeled her off the boat in a stretcher. That was the last time the rescuers and the girl saw each other. Until this year.
A fishing expedition
May 18, 1986, was the kind of beautiful, sunny day that regularly brought the Rodriguez family to Catalina Island for some fishing on their 28-foot pleasure boat, DC Too.
Desireé's father,
