Karen Cohn Makes the Case for Lifeguards as First Responders in New York Post Op-Ed

A viral rescue off the California coast became the launching point for an op-ed from Karen Cohn, Co-Founder of The ZAC Foundation, published in the New York Post. The op-ed opened with the story of Ryder Williams, a 16-year-old California State Parks lifeguard who held onto 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai through pounding surf after the boy was swept out at Seabright State Beach on July 25, until a second lifeguard reached them.

From there, Karen widened the lens to a workforce problem: a national lifeguard shortage that’s leaving beaches, pools and waterways short-staffed, even as drownings have climbed to roughly 4,500 a year in the U.S. since the pandemic. She noted that drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 and the second leading cause of unintentional injury death for kids ages 5 to 14, with Black children drowning at disproportionately higher rates due to long-standing inequities in access to pools and swim lessons.

Karen tied Williams’s rescue to renewed momentum behind legislation that would formally classify California’s open-water lifeguards as first responders, a designation Hawaii and New Jersey already have. She framed the ask plainly: pay lifeguards what the job is worth, build real training and career pathways, and treat the work as the life-or-death job it already is.

Read the New York Post op-ed.