These drifting paddleboarders were lucky to have a phone and a persistent rescuer
Officer Bobby Dube of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is well-known to South Florida reporters because he’s one of their go-to people on questions about a fisheries violation, a boat crash or a diving incident in the Keys.
But the longtime agency spokesman fell back on his law enforcement and search-and-rescue training last Friday looking for a mother and daughter lost at sea off Islamorada while paddleboarding.
The pair had their cellphones and called 911 around 4:30 p.m., telling operators they were struggling in high winds to get back to shore, according to Fish and Wildlife.
Dispatchers told Monroe County sheriff’s deputies and FWC officers in the area that the women were about a mile and a half offshore of Indian Key Fill.
Dube was towing a patrol boat and put it in the water to respond to the call.
He stayed in contact with 911 operators, who were still speaking with the women, but eventually, that call dropped, according to the agency.
However, after a “lengthy search,” Dube, with the help of a civilian boater, located the women “clutching on to one another” in the water.
“The mother-daughter duo were uninjured, but they were scared, cold and wet, but relieved that they had been rescued,” the agency said in a statement.
The FWC did not name the women.
Dube told them they were “extremely lucky” they had their cellphones to call 911 “when they could no longer paddle against the high winds and were drifting out to sea,” adding, “the scenario could have ended tragically.”
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 7:41 AM.
