The city honored 16 Ocean Safety lifeguards Friday for their heroism in saving lives, with one taking the city’s Employee of the Year award.

Bryan Phillips got the top spot, not just for saving countless lives during his 16 years with Ocean Safety, but “for keeping the Junior Lifeguard Program afloat when the city wasn’t able to fund it,” said Honolulu Emergency Serv­ices Department spokeswoman Shayne Enright.

“Being recognized individually is an honor, but this award is for my partners as well,” the 35-year-old said. “You really can’t do this job by yourself. As a team it’s really important we are all strong together.”

In addition to his regular job of rescue watercraft operator on the North Shore, Phillips has kept the Junior Lifeguard Program funded by writing grants for the past 10 to 12 years through the North Shore Lifeguard Association, which he heads as president.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority has stepped up to award grants the past five years, and the lifeguard association has donated to the other Hawaii counties as well.

Phillips personally knows the program’s importance. “I was a junior lifeguard for five to six years in a row,” he said, and became a city lifeguard in 2004 right out of high school.

The free program “gives kids a safe place to go in the summertime,” he said. “It promotes our future generations of lifeguards. … At least a third of the workforce came through the program.”

Phillips has gotten to work alongside some of his former instructors, and as a former instructor himself, many young lifeguards come up to him and say, “Uncle Bryan, what’s up? I was your student.”

He now does administrative work for the program with grant writing, logistics planning, team building and procuring equipment, permits and insurance.

He also advocates for lifeguards in the state, having helped create a bargaining unit just for county lifeguards.

In his regular job as a North Shore rescue watercraft operator, he sometimes has to plow through 30- to 50-foot wave faces to rescue individuals.

But there are times when “you see a life slip away in your hands,” Phillips says. “You kind of analyze it. What happened? What can we do to make it better, or is this a scenario that was just out of our hands? As a team we try to minimize that accident from happening.”

Recently, a man walking along the rocks got swept off the reef in an area between Waimea Bay and Three Tables.

“I had to dive down in 25 to 30 feet in murky water,” Phillips said. “I saw his body on the ocean floor after 20 to 30 minutes. That one was pretty shocking.”

He said these actions “are happening every day around the state. We just do our job.”

For their heroism, the Mayor’s Awards Program bestowed 15 lifeguards with the valor award.

Fourteen of those lifeguards were honored for their part in the December rescue of a woman, 21, and man, 19, who were swept into the water at Kaena State Beach Park’s Moi Hole. Those 14 were Miguel Baez Jr., Noland Keaulana, Koa Ibarra, Kamakani Froiseth, Kory Romero, Kaimana Beauford, Darryl Terukina, Matthew Arakaki, Melanie Bartels, Rayden Keaulana, Taku Horie, Daniel Zukoski, Brandon Martin and Jaron Chong.

The Ocean Safety team of on- and off-duty lifeguards recovered the unconscious woman and kept her alive with high-performance CPR, but she died two days later in the hospital.

Lifeguards returned before sunrise the next day and risked their lives by swimming into the Moi Hole cave, having to hold their breath for minutes while getting in and out of the cave. They were able to recover the body of the man by using their fins to feel for him.

“This team of Ocean Safety personnel went above and beyond to try to save these two lives in giant and dangerous surf,” Ocean Safety Chief John Titchen said in a written statement. “Exhausted, they returned home that evening, got rest briefly and returned in the dark the next morning to continue the search.”

In a second incident in December at Pipeline, Andrew Logreco, a rescue watercraft operator, raced to the scene to help a professional surfer who had wiped out on a wave. The surfer struck his head on his board, was knocked unconscious and had a fractured skull.

Logreco positioned his watercraft “in such a way to make the rescue,” the city said in a news release.

He jumped into the water, found the surfer submerged and managed to bring him up to the surface.

Logreco kept the man afloat and positioned him onto the sled of a second watercraft, which took the surfer to shore.

On the beach, Logreco, joined by others, prepared him for treatment with Emergency Medical Serv­ices, and the surfer survived.

Phillips says five watermen, considered “the godfathers of Jet Ski rescue,” developed techniques adopted around the world, and it all started here in Hawaii. He was fortunate enough to have one of them — Mel Puu — as his instructor in 2011.

Phillips said, “You don’t have to even be in the ocean for the ocean to come and take you away.”

Visitors and residents alike must have a deep respect for the ocean, he said.