Aviation Survival Technician Chief George Cavallo is geared up and ready for a rescue mission at US Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, Alaska, 2000.

What Happens After the Helicopter Rescue?

Sometimes the people doing the rescuing need help too.

By George Cavallo

The cabin door opened and the heat hit me first. I sat at the door of our US Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin with my fins on, ready to go, hot exhaust spooling from the vents around me as the helicopter hovered over the Pacific. Below were 35-ft.-plus rollers—great walls of water marching beneath the aircraft. The rotor wash karate-chopped their tops, turning the ocean into streaks of white water.

Somewhere down there was the sailboat we’d been sent to assist. I had to concentrate just to find it. Between the swells, its white hull would appear for a moment, only to disappear behind another roller. If the people aboard that sailboat went into the water, I was going in after them.

But daylight was disappearing. Our pilots repeatedly urged the sailors to abandon their crippled vessel while we were there, while we still had daylight, a helicopter overhead, and a rescue swimmer sitting at the door ready to go. If they stayed and things got worse, another Coast Guard crew might have to return in darkness and attempt a hoist from that same violent sea.

They chose to remain aboard.

We eventually turned for Humboldt Bay. I came home. A Coast Guard helicopter would have to go back, and the next time, I wouldn’t be sitting in the rescue swimmer’s seat.

Back at the unit was newly qualified rescue swimmer ASM3 (Aviation Survivalman Petty Officer Third Class) James “Jamie” Caines. I had helped train Jamie. He had qualified that Friday. But I had already flown out to the sailboat, and Jamie needed the experience. There was nothing remarkable about letting the new swimmer take the next flight.

So I gave him my seat.

On Sunday night, Jun. 8, 1997, Jamie climbed aboard CG-6549 to return to that same vessel. This time, it was dark. The very thing our pilots had tried to prevent was happening.

CG-6549 never came home.

Everyone aboard was killed. Jamie—the young rescue swimmer who had qualified only two days earlier—died in the seat I had given him.

For nearly three decades, that seat has never been very far from my mind.

What the training doesn’t teach you is how to deal with someone dying in your place—especially someone you helped train.

Search-and-rescue stories are usually told from launch to landing. The alarm sounds. The crew runs to the aircraft. Someone goes into the water. Someone gets hoisted. The aircraft returns. The engines shut down. Mission complete.

But that’s not always where the story ends. Sometimes that’s where another story begins.

What the Training Doesn’t Teach You

I spent 20 years in the Coast Guard, beginning as Rescue Swimmer #122 and eventually retiring as a chief warrant officer. I participated in rescues where people who should have died went home to their families. Yet, one of the missions that affected me most was the one I wasn’t on.

Rescue swimmers are trained to go toward trouble. We train for cold water, heavy seas, panicked survivors, physical exhaustion, and equipment failures. What the training doesn’t teach you is how to deal with someone dying in your place—especially someone you helped train.

There’s a peculiar mathematics that follows something like that. If I hadn’t given him the flight. If I had gone instead. If the sailors had abandoned the vessel when we were overhead. If one decision had been different.

You can run those calculations for the rest of your life.

They never balance.

Back then, particularly in military aviation and search and rescue, we weren’t always very good at talking about what happened emotionally after traumatic missions. We were very good at getting back to work.

So that’s what I did. I kept flying. I kept putting on the rescue harness. I kept sitting in that doorway. I kept going into the water.

But Jamie came with me.

Years later, my Coast Guard career led me into critical-incident stress management and peer support. By then, I understood something I couldn’t have explained as a young rescue swimmer: Sometimes the people doing the rescuing need help too.

Aviation is exceptionally good at learning from tragedy. When an aircraft is lost, we examine the machine, weather, maintenance, procedures, communications, training, and decisions because lessons from one tragedy might prevent another.

But another part doesn’t fit neatly into an investigation report: what happens to everyone left behind. The families waiting for information. The crews searching for friends. The maintainers looking at an empty space on the flight line. The instructor wondering whether he taught the new guy everything he needed to know.

And the rescue swimmer who gave up his seat.

Their feelings don’t necessarily end when the investigation does. Sometimes they last a lifetime.

What I eventually came to understand is what we owe the men and women we send into the storm. We owe them good aircraft, excellent training, sound procedures, and crews who trust one another with their lives. But when those crews come home—or when one doesn’t—we owe them something else:

We need to ask how they’re doing. Then, we need to be willing to hear the answer.

I Carry Him with Me

Nearly three decades later, I can still put myself back in that helicopter. Fins on. Cabin door open. Hot exhaust blowing around me. Thirty-five-foot rollers below, their tops shredded white by rotor wash. Between them, the white hull appearing and disappearing in the Pacific.

Our pilot pleading with the sailors to leave the boat while there was still daylight. While I was sitting at the door ready to go.

They stayed. We flew home. Another crew went back. Jamie took my seat. CG-6549 never came home.

His name was James Caines. Jamie. He qualified as a Coast Guard rescue swimmer on Friday. He died on Sunday. I still carry him with me.

Maybe that’s what happens after the rescue: Some of them never really end.

George Cavallo spent 20 years in the US Coast Guard, beginning his career as Rescue Swimmer #122 and eventually retiring as a chief warrant officer. He is also the author of Sharks & Daisies: Tales of a Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer and Top Fin, the story of Master Chief Darell Gelakoska and the early generations of Coast Guard aviation survival and rescue swimmers. Visit his website and follow him on Instagram at @sharksanddaisies.