Tamara Loiselle : Calgary triathlete saves Montreal couple from drowning in Mexico

A Montreal couple is thanking a quick thinking Calgarian for saving them after they were caught in an undertow off a Mexican beach over the holiday break.

Tamara Loiselle was in Cancun last week and was walking along the beach at 7:30 a.m. with a friend when she saw two people in trouble in the water.

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 triathlon athlete 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.”

Loiselle is no stranger to the dangers of deep waters. She almost drowned about six years ago after she fell off a boat and didn’t have the strength to pull herself up. She vowed to get back into shape.

The strength she earned over time would save two people.

Armed with a life preserver and a rope secured to a reel on the beach, Loiselle swam beneath the waves, which were coming fast and furious. A big wave knocked the wind out of her.

“At one point, I was like, Oh my God, what did I get myself into? I hope this works out because I have two children at home.”

As she continued to close in on the stranded swimmers, another tense moment came as the rope connecting her to the beach became stuck. For a minute or so, she couldn’t move.

“I was really getting pummelled by the waves.”

Once the jam was cleared, she pressed on and soon came upon a man. He pleaded with her to rescue a woman who was farther out.

“Go to her, go to her,” he said.

Loiselle let him grab onto the life preserver and they both swam out to the woman.

“Just her face was sticking out of the water. She was gasping for air; she was totally exhausted, unable to swim anymore.”

About a minute into the rescue, the men on the beach began towing them back to shore, where they were greeted by paramedics. They grabbed the woman, who couldn’t walk.

“I looked over and the man was totally traumatized. He was in a fetal position on the beach with his hands on his head, his eyes fixed on the ground. I asked him if he was OK. He said he was.”

The next day, she received a Facebook message from the man she saved. The message said: “words cannot describe my gratitude but I’ll try.”

The man wrote that before Loiselle arrived, his girlfriend was about to let go and had said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Ever since this incident, we’re feeling as this is added time, overtime … A gift to be able to live more, to be here some more time.”

Agencies/Canadajournal