www.montereycountynow.com JANUARY 23-29, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 19 Steve Bruemmer is a reluctant triathlete. The way he describes his “midlife crisis,” it sounds like barely a blip—a moment of exasperation with his career in IT, when yet another request for tech support came in on the Monterey Peninsula College campus on a Friday afternoon six years into the job, when he was 50. “I thought maybe I should quit my job and run a marathon, or ride a bicycle across the country,” he says. The notion lasted for just a few hours until Steve realized he had responsibilities, including two daughters and their private school tuitions: “I shouldn’t quit my job, that’s dumb.” Midlife crisis, averted. His wife, Brita Bruemmer, had already embraced “the triathlon lifestyle” and was registered for a race. Steve was already a bicyclist; he’d just have to learn to run and swim. He registered that night for a race. Swimming was not easy for him, but he signed up for a class at MPC. When he first joined Brita for an ocean swim with a group called the Kelp Krawlers, who meet every Sunday at Lovers Point, it was a choppy “rockand-roll day on the water.” Nauseated, he quickly turned around. Ear plugs solved the seasickness problem, and the years went on. Bruemmer became known as Fast Steve, and regularly met up with the group. During the pandemic, when pools were closed, smaller groups started meeting for ocean swims almost daily. So by 2022, when he was 62 and newly retired, Bruemmer was confident he’d find a group at Lovers Point to join him for a swim on a warm, sunny, still Wednesday morning. He was surprised to show up on June 22 and find himself alone. But conditions were perfect, so he pulled on his wetsuit, got in the water, and went for a swim. Bruemmer was nearly back to the beach in Lovers Point cove, cruising along freestyle, when all of a sudden he was jolted out of the water. Adult white sharks hunt their prey by hurtling toward it from below, mouth open. It’s not uncommon for a shark and its meal to be hoisted fully up and out of the water. In the mouth of a white shark, its jaws around his midsection, Steve was hoisted up and out of the water, then plunged back into it. He felt oddly calm as he came eye-to-eye underwater with a great white shark. “Don’t bite me again,” Bruemmer telegraphed silently. He reached out to try to punch the shark, a technique he’d heard about if, against the odds, you ever encounter a shark in the ocean. His fist couldn’t reach, but his outstretched hand could, so he pushed the shark’s lower jaw with his fingertips. The animal disappeared, and Bruemmer quickly came to the surface. He doesn’t remember feeling pain, but he saw blood everywhere. He immediately started yelling for help. An improbable and heroic rescue effort followed, as two stand-up paddle-boarders, Aimee Johns and Paul Bandy, were heading back toward the beach and heard the screaming. Surf instructor Heath Braddock was coaching a church youth group in the cove, and a parent with the group, visiting from Topeka, Kansas, saw the shark’s tail reenter the water, before he heard the yelling—he whispered to Braddock to go help, and Braddock paddled out on two surfboards stacked together. Collectively, Braddock, Johns and Bandy—who later received Carnegie Medal awards for their heroism—hoisted Bruemmer onto a board and got him back to shore. An ambulance was already waiting. Fifty-nine minutes after he was in the jaws of a shark, Bruemmer was at Natividad hospital in Salinas at 11:30am. “We talk about the ‘golden hour’ in trauma, the first 60 minutes,” says Dr. Nicholas Rottler, a trauma surgeon at Natividad who treated Bruemmer. “If patients don’t receive care within that [time period], their chances of dying go up significantly.” The page had already gone out while Bruemmer was en route to the hospital, which 10 years ago was designated as Monterey County’s trauma center. That means a team of specialists—trauma surgeons, an anesthesiologist, X-ray tech, the blood bank, etc.—is ready to spring into action. The majority of patients come in suffering from blunt force trauma in traffic collisions, not penetrative wounds. Most penetrative wounds come from violence like gunshots or stabbings. An animal bite patient in the trauma unit is extremely rare—but everything about Bruemmer’s case seemed rare. “This was the unluckiest moment followed by all the luckiest moments in the world,” Rottler says. That luck started with an ad hoc team of rescuers who quickly got Bruemmer to shore. And it continued as the trauma team cut off Bruemmer’s wetsuit and evaluated his injuries. It was clear that his midsection had been squarely in the shark’s mouth—tooth marks cut across his abdomen and thighs, and also his arm. But remarkably, no major arteries were severed. “It was, ‘oh my god, I can see his iliac artery,’” Rottler recalls. “But it is not bleeding.” The artery, located in the pelvis, was exposed but not sliced open—a matter of millimeters that would have been the difference between life and death. Bruemmer received 28 units of blood transfusions, equivalent to about Survive and Thrive After a near-death experience from a shark bite, Steve Bruemmer is on the road to recovery. By Sara Rubin Above: Steve Bruemmer re-learned how to ride a bike after suffering major injuries from a shark bite in 2022. He is now regularly riding 100 miles a week as he trains for a triathlon. Below: Bruemmer with Natividad trauma surgeon Dr. Nicholas Rottler, left, and Acute Rehabilitation Center Director Dr. Anthony Galicia. DANIEL DRIEFUSS COURTESY OF NATIVIDAD
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