David Poirier has spent the past 20 years of his life working in and around the water, aiding boaters and swimmers and saving lives as both a lifeguard and a harbor patrol officer.
But last May, he endured the most difficult rescue of his career, in a late-night challenge against a man who didn’t want to be saved. Last week, he was honored with the South Bay Police and Fire Memorial Foundation Medal of Valor, given to those who went above and beyond in dangerous situations to save a life that would otherwise have surely been lost.
“My hat’s off to Dave,” said Redondo Beach Police Chief Robert Metzger. “The only way he did it is that he’s not just a big, strong guy, but that he’s an incredible swimmer.”
Poirier was one of two officers to be honored with a Medal of Valor this year, alongside Hawthorne Police Officer Alex Khan, who shot and killed an armed suspect who fired into a nearby car that was asking him for his assistance, and held additional suspects until help could arrive.
Poirier’s rescue was, in essence, one man against the sea. At 10 p.m. on May 14, he and the captain of a two-man Harbor Patrol vessel arrived at a call at the Redondo Pier, where a large adult male was in the water in an area too risky to bring a rescue boat into.
That may have been by design; the victim, Poirier later learned, didn’t want to be rescued.
As Metzger wrote in his nominating report, what was expected to be a relatively fast operation “turned into a 40 minute pitched ‘battle’ in the darned water with a person who resisted all efforts of assistance.”
As the two struggled against one another, Poirier fought to bring the victim closer to shore, which eventually allowed LA County Lifeguards to assist; according to Metzger, it took four rescuers to pull the victim out of the water.
“I don’t think most people appreciate just how risky what he did is,” Metzger said of Poirier. “He was under the pier, in the current, with all of the pilings and trying to overcome somebody who didn’t want to be rescued.”
MBPD officers honored
Manhattan Beach Police Officers were given the Life Saving Award for their actions tending to the arterial wound of a man who had punched out the window of a Manhattan Beach bar last August.
Officers Carlos Olivares, Chad Swanson, Don Brown and Derek San Agustin responded within seconds to the scene, where the suspect was lying semi-conscious in a pool of his own blood. Officers Olivares and Swanson quickly moved to apply tourniquets to the man’s wound, as Swanson reached into the wound to pack it with gauze and apply pressure to the severed artery.
Officers Brown and San Agustin held the struggling suspect in place and searched for additional wounds as their colleagues, who were sprayed with blood in their eyes and mouths for their trouble, worked to save the man’s life.
Doctors at Harbor General Hospital credit the officers’ actions with saving the man’s life.
