She was dead for 18 minutes after drowning in a rip current. Then, she started breathing

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Tia Gambrel-Irizarry is no stranger to swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean or any large body of water.

As a trained diver, former lifeguard, and informal swim instructor, she knows a thing or two about staying safe while swimming. She learned to swim when she was 8 months old.

That still didn't help the 37-year-old Lehigh Acres resident when a pleasant beach outing turned deadly June 28.

Currents drastically changed when a passing storm made conditions worse where she was swimming off Turner Beach on the edge of Captiva, throwing Gambrel-Irizarry into a compromised position as a powerful current pulled at her, tiring her, quickly dragging her under the waves and drowning her.

She was dead — by some estimates, up to 18 minutes.

"I am a certified lifeguard and diver and I still couldn't even make it to swim parallel to shore," she said Sunday at her home, where she remains recuperating. "It swept me out in seconds."

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The day started on a high note.

Gambrel-Irizarry; husband Daniel Irizarry; children Maddox, 13, and Eloina, 5; and family from out of town, had planned an outing at the scenic Captiva beach where collecting shells is popular and spotting dolphins isn't unusual.

Gambrel-Irizarry and her daughter did some close-to-shore snorkeling before she sent the little girl back to family on shore while she did what she loves to do: swim a ways off shore.

"The weather was gorgeous at first," she said. "It wasn't storming yet. We thought if it comes, we'll get out."

Conditions didn't give them that luxury.

"It really wasn't a bad current," she said. "I was going to do a quick out and back."

About four football fields offshore, a strong rip current, juiced by a waterspout up the coast, took hold of Gambrel-Irizarry's body.

"I got caught in it," she said, adding that she tried to keep kicking and get higher out of the water, flailing her arms to attract attention.

She did everything she has been taught, and teaches others to do, when caught in a rip current: Swim parallel to the current, don't fight.

"The current was too strong," Gambrel-Irizarry said, "There was no swimming parallel that day."

She aspirated water and was, by all accounts, dead for a significant amount of time -- about 15 to 18 minutes.

Not even her husband knew what was going on.

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Asked by family to get his wife because another storm was moving in, Irizarry was not a happy man.

"I was mad I had to swim out to tell her to come in," he said, now shaking his head in remembrance.

He didn't notice she was incapacitated until after he, too, got caught by the rip and then tried swimming sideways with his wife in a rescue position.

"I picked her up and tossed her toward the beach. Then I noticed her head sinking into the water," he said. "We weren't going anywhere. We were going backwards."

Irizarry said he then heard sirens and saw foam coming from his wife's mouth and nose. "I started getting scared," he said as his wife rubbed her hand on his leg.

Those who came to her rescue included members of the Sanibel Fire Department and members of the Lee County Sheriff's Office Marine Unit.

Lt. Chris Nyce and Sgt. Tim Galloway were in the area when they were alerted by a Marine Emergency Response Team call at 4:30 p.m. that someone nearby was in trouble.

"We had just gone through the storm and it had cleared," Galloway said. "It was still raining and kinda choppy out but the worst had gone through."

Galloway and Nyce pulled their 36-foot Ambar, a rigid-hull inflatable boat, close to where Gambrel-Irizarry was being pulled by Sanibel firefighters Robert Wilkins and Arian Moore, about 400-yards offshore.

A cellphone video caught by a bystander showed Galloway jumping off the boat and into the surf to assist Wilkins and Moore.

Gambrel-Irizarry's color told Galloway that the woman was in trouble, so he chucked his equipment and dove in to help. When Galloway grabbed Gambrel-Irizarry's wrist, he couldn't find a pulse.

Galloway and Moore escorted the exhausted husband the several hundred yards to shore.

"It was quite a struggle," Galloway said.

After starting chest compressions on Gambrel-Irizarry, who had been loaded on a rescue board, Wilkins and Nyce managed to get her on the boat and the LCSO lieutenant pushed the craft full-throttle up over a sandbar and right up on the beach.

"She was dead for a couple of minutes," he said. "That's why we made the decision to full-throttle to the beach."

On the beach, CPR was performed and an automated external defibrillator was used to shock the drowned woman's heart.

"That brought her around," Galloway said. "She started breathing."

It helped that Galloway and Nyce have a history together. Both are former U.S. Coast Guardsmen who worked search and rescue operations while stationed at Marathon in the Florida Keys in the 1990s before being hired with the LCSO.

Both said Gambrel-Irizarry was extremely lucky; they have been in many situations like this one that didn't turn out as positive.

"The timing on this was perfect," Nyce said. "It came in as a MERT call and we just happened to be in the right area."

"We were just part of the whole picture," Galloway said, adding that the Sanibel firefighters involved and other medical personnel who took part helped Gambrel-Irizarry survive her ordeal.

The rescue was also made more crazy to Gambrel-Irizarry because the board used by the Sanibel firefighters was delivered to them that day.

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"They had just trained for four hours," she said she was told. "And they were dead tired."

Gambrel-Irizarry was discharged from the hospital Wednesday, just days after her "death."

"They told me I would be the hospital a month," Gambrel-Irizarry said. "I was out in four days."

Gambrel-Irizarry remains affected by the ordeal. She has a wracking cough from the water she aspirated, bruises from the rescue efforts, chest pain from the defibrillator and has occasional trouble remembering the right word or phrase.

Her recuperation because of the hypoxia — oxygen starvation — her brain suffered means she will need therapy.

In addition, Gambrel-Irizarry will head to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa on Monday for a possible lumpectomy. She beat breast cancer once before but needs to be checked for a possible recurrence.

Will her short-lived death by drowning mean no more beach swimming for the couple?

"It was a scenario that was freakish," Irizarry said. "It could happen to anybody. But we'll go back to the beach."

Follow Michael Braun on Twitter @MichaelBraunNP.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: She was dead for 18 minutes after drowning in a rip current. Then, she started breathing