Reunited With Her Rescuers
2021 This meeting was on happier terms
1986 Desireé Rodriguez, nine, floated in her life jacket until help arrived
She had been drifting in the cold Pacific water for a night and most of a day.
Kept afloat by her orange life jacket, nine-year-old Desireé Rodriguez had watched helplessly as one family member after another let go of life. Just as she, too, began to give up, the skipper of a fishing boat spotted her bobbing in the water. Within minutes, the boat’s first officer leaped in and grabbed Desireé, pulling her back toward the boat—and toward life.
That was 35 years ago, and the last time the rescuers and the girl saw one another. Until this year.
May 18, 1986, was the kind of beautiful, sunny day that regularly brought the Rodriguez family to California’s Catalina Island for some fishing on their 28-foot pleasure boat, the DC Too.
Desireé’s father, a 30-year-old construction worker named Thomas Rodriguez, loved the sport, especially catching bass. A strong, slender man, he had instilled in his oldest daughter a love of the outdoors, teaching her how to bait a hook and cast a line.
As was their custom
