Published January 5, 2015 03:52PM
Calgary triathlete Tamara Loiselle was vacationing in Cancun, Mexico when she jumped into the ocean to save drowning vacationers.
As Tamara Loiselle stood on a Cancun beach looking out into the surging ocean where two stranded swimmers gasped for air, she glanced around at the nervous faces of a dozen or so security guards next to her.
They had all been drawn to the shoreline by screams echoing from the swimmers, who were so distant they looked like nothing more than two specks bobbing on the heaving water.
Loiselle, a triathlete from Calgary who had spent the Christmas holidays in Mexico, could sense the security guards from the nearby condo complex were not willing to take the plunge.
A couple years before, two women in their 20s had drowned near that same stretch of beach. Other swimmers had been rescued earlier that very week.
“The security guards were talking among themselves (in Spanish) and I imagine they were saying, ‘Yeah, it’s not great to send a tourist out there, but what other choice do we have?’ ” Loiselle recalled of that morning on Dec. 29.
“No one else was willing or able to go in, so I offered to go.”
Read more: Calgaryherald.com