Surfer hit by canoe at Tonggs thanks team that saved his life

From time to time during the nine months since he and his coworker rescued young surfer Kai Keuning, Honolulu Ocean Safety lifeguard Kekoa Kekumano would think about the kid and wonder how he was doing.

Kekumano was on tower duty at Kaimana Beach sometime after 4 p.m. July 10, “when I was alerted that a person was undergoing CPR in the water at Tonggs,” a popular surf break about half a mile toward Diamond Head.

An Ocean Safety water scooter, operated by Chris Braun, picked Kekumano up and the two officers “shooted down to Tonggs,” where they found Keuning — who’d been knocked unconscious by a canoe on that Saturday — “being held afloat by some of the canoe paddlers and his uncle. Kai’s face was out of the water, which was a good thing, but his skin had turned blue and he was pretty close to being dead.”

In that state, he said, “people’s bodies get slippery,” and Keuning wasn’t wearing a shirt, so Kekumano grabbed him “by the swim trunks and hair, got him onto the back of the sled with my body squeezed against his to keep him from slipping out, and Chris sent that ski flying back to Kaimana Beach, (where) he wasn’t breathing and his eyes were rolled back completely.”

The lifeguards administered CPR, suctioned water and vomit from Keuning’s airways and gave him oxygen from a tank. Within minutes, the Honolulu Fire Department and Honolulu Emergency Services responded, and that was the last Kekumano saw of him until Thursday, when Keuning walked up and thanked him on the beach.

“Kai looked great — it was definitely a night and day type of thing,” the lifeguard said. “I was very glad to see him.”

His words were echoed by other rescuers gathered at Kaimana Beach Park, where each told their different part of the story and, for the first time, could see its whole trajectory.

“That was a really moving experience for us, to learn who did what, in that first 30 minutes after the accident,” said David Keuning, Kai’s father.

KAI, 18, SAID he had no memory of being struck by the canoe, which caused a severe, traumatic brain injury that put him in a coma for 13 hours and turned his life upside down: Instead of going to college in the fall, he spent weeks in The Queen’s Medical Center intensive care unit and months in therapy, including at a residential center for neural skills in Bakersfield, Calif.

“I have a really faint memory of going out with my uncle to surf, and seeing a canoe catching waves kind of close to us,” he said. “I believe I was hit in the back of the head, so I wouldn’t have been able to see (the incident).”

“After Kai was hit, I saw that he wasn’t coming out of the water,” said Ethan Won, Keuning’s calabash uncle. “I paddled over fast, let go of my board and pulled him out of the water by his leash. I put him on his board, and started CPR.”

One of the canoe paddlers gave mouth to mouth resuscitation, and “Kai started breaths that sounded like he was groaning, (but) his eyes, head and body looked lifeless,” Won said.

After the rescue craft arrived and pulled Keuning on, he added, “I never saw a Jet Ski move that incredibly fast.”

“We later found out that from the time we got alerted to the time we started CPR on the beach, it was under three minutes,” Kekumano said. “There was a lot of adrenaline going through us because we knew in cases like Kai’s, every second counts.”

He added it was serendipitous the water scooter was near Kaimana Beach at that time, when rescue units were normally heading back to Sand Island by the 5 p.m. end of their shifts; by coincidence, the very next day, as had long been requested and planned by Ocean Safety, they started extended shifts, working until 7 p.m.

As Honolulu EMS paramedics Samantha Blanchard and Jared Tanouye continued the work to save his life, Keuning was taken to Queen’s hospital.

“When Kai awoke, his first words were, ‘What happened’?” David Keuning said. “After we told him, he asked, “‘Where’s my board?’”

He remembered Kai’s painful but determined struggle to fully recover, but that “at some point, he was still in a wheelchair but he was back mentally, and I remember saying to Anika (Kai’s older sister), if he never gets any better, I’m okay with this.”

Now, he added, “to see him bounding up the stairs, and weight lifting, it’s all that I wanted and more.”

“I WAS THINKING, without you there, I wouldn’t have my son,” Keuning’s mother, Manami, said of meeting the first responders. “They said they were just doing their job, glad to help.”

When they told Kai’s grandfather about the reunion, “he was like, didn’t you at least bring them malasadas, or a lei?” David Keuning said with a laugh, adding he wished it had occurred to him.

“This is our job, we love to do it and expect nothing in return,” Kekumano said, adding that Kai had given the Ocean Safety team a rare and appreciated gift by stopping by so they could see he was healthy and back to normal.

Lifeguards save a lot of people, most of whom they never hear from again, which is fine, he said, but “sometimes you have a heavy case and you wonder if you were able to help at all.”

“You say thank you and you know it’s not enough,” Manami Keuning said. “We just hugged them.”

“It’s a great feeling to be able to see someone who you worked so hard to keep alive come walking up and give you a hug,” said Tanouye, a paramedic.

“It was a really feel-good moment,” Kai Keuning said of the event, with emotion in his voice. “I attribute my quick recovery to everyone who saved and supported me, all the love pouring in, knowing I wasn’t alone and had so much to look forward to, which really helped my attitude and mental fortitude to keep pushing through the pain.”

He is taking classes at Kapiolani Community College, going to the gym, and working in the after-school program at Hawaii Baptist Academy, his alma mater, with elementary school students who keep asking to hear the story of his ordeal, again and again.

Now he can add he was “saved by Aquaman,” having learned that Kekumano, 23, played the young Jason Momoa in the film.

While he can swim in the ocean, Keuning’s doctor has advised against surfing for a year.

In August his studies will move him far from temptation, to Arizona.