A wild weekend of rescues on L.A. County beaches

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, July 28. There will be a touch of morning fog, then merciless sunshine (high 80s).

It was an idyllic Saturday afternoon on Venice Beach. Tourists chattered in German, Spanish and Russian; rough-and-tumble members of a motorcycle gang hovered at the edge of the fishing pier. It was blistering inland, but balmy and breezy on the coast: a perfect summer day. 

Then Adam Rose heard the lifeguards’ whistles.

The career journalist and press-rights advocate peered down from the pier at a brown streak cutting across the waves — “the gnarliest rip current I’ve ever seen in my life,” he recalled. 

Rose watched as two L.A. County lifeguards knifed through the water to rescue an ailing swimmer caught in the tide, along with a Good Samaritan who’d jumped in to help and been swept out too. 

The Venice incident was among the nearly 2,000 rescues that L.A. County lifeguards performed Saturday and Sunday, as hundreds of thousands of people thronged L.A. County beaches amid last weekend’s heat wave. Going into the weekend, the National Weather Service’s local office had warned of dangerous rip currents, along with elevated surf and powerful breaking waves. 

L.A. County Captain Ocean Lifeguard Pono Barnes wasn’t sure if this weekend’s 1,950 ocean rescues were a record for the county — knowing for sure would require pulling a bunch of stats — but if the weekend’s numbers weren’t a peak, they were “near a record for rescue work,” he said. For comparison, there were 11,714 ocean rescues in total in 2025.

Beaches remain open even when there is large surf, Barnes said, but the division tries to practice “preventative lifeguarding.”

“On a busy day like that, I would bet you that everybody that worked Saturday came home like they just came back from a concert: Their throats were probably all scratchy because they’d been talking to people all day and trying to alert swimmers and get them moved over to a safe area,” Barnes posited. 

The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Lifeguard Division patrols dozens of miles of sandy beaches, from the Ventura County line south to Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. The department has about 200 full-time staff, according to Barnes, and roughly 650 “recurrent” lifeguards who work on an as-needed basis. (They are recurrent, and not seasonal, because there is no off-season at L.A. County beaches.) The recurrent ranks include doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors and many students who are called in for occasional work, Barnes said. 

“We've had all types and walks of life be lifeguards, and they go and they do their normal day-to-day thing … And then they come back in the summer months,” Barnes explained. “There’s a saying that's like, ‘Once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard.’”

Barnes himself is an 18-year veteran of the division who got his start as a high school sophomore with the county’s junior lifeguards program. 

With more heat and high surf in the forecast, Barnes advised beachgoers to enter water near an open lifeguard tower, and ask lifeguards about current ocean conditions and hazards. And swim, surf and bodyboard within your abilities. 

Witches, musicians, aging television stars and a colorful and fictionalized set of historical personages figure in our newest books roundup, in which we scour publishing catalogs for noteworthy books about Los Angeles, set in Los Angeles or by Los Angeles authors. This edition features the latest from Mary H.K. Choi, James Ellroy, Julia Bianco and Vijay Gupta. 

A PIONEERING L.A. ARTIST: Assemblage artist Betye Saar died in her sleep a few days shy of her 100th birthday. Saar “transformed collections of bigoted bric-à-brac — Sambo dolls, ceramic mammies and crude renderings of pickaninnies — into potent works of assemblage that mined the searing history of race in the United States,” Carolina Miranda writes in the L.A. Times obit. 

D4VD CASE TO MOVE FORWARD: After a five-day preliminary hearing, an L.A. judge ruled that there is enough evidence for singer D4VD to stand trial in the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

CHARGES DROPPED: The Justice Department moved to dismiss its criminal case against SEIU California President David Huerta — a prominent labor leader who was arrested last year while protesting President Trump’s immigration crackdown. 

JOHNNY DEPP’S COMEBACK TOUR: A decade after allegations of domestic abuse, Paramount is betting that audiences will re-embrace the movie star. 

SUMMER’S HOTTEST TART: Alhambra bakery Pinecone serves heritage grain-based tarts crowned with peak season produce, Eater LA reports. 

FACT MEETS FICTION: Sweetbitter author Stephanie Danler’s next novel will follow a fictional reporter covering the Menendez Brothers trial in 1990s Los Angeles. Smog will be released in March 2027.

A Transporting Southwestern Adobe in West Adams

This four-bedroom Spanish Colonial Revival is one of L.A.’s rare surviving historic adobe residences, with lovely tilework and original hardwood floors “milled from a single hand-selected tree by the architect,” per the listing. 

Designated as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 621, the residence was designed by architect Harwood Hewitt and adobe builder John Byers. The house’s courtyard centers around an incredible mature cactus. 

And because no L.A. real estate listing can be entirely perfect, it’s also a bit uncomfortably close to the 10 freeway. (Though the 1922 residence was there first, for the record.) The house clocks in at 2,560 square feet and is listed for $1.8 million. 

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Psalm” by Marilyn Nelson.

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