HUNTINGTON BEACH Jake Hammit had to make a decision: hold onto his surfboard or let go of his prosthetic leg.
The surfboard could do more damage, plowing into a group of people wading in shallow waters on the inside near the sand, he figured. The prosthetic leg, however, was replaceable.
“Hey, have you seen a leg around here?” he asked his friend and surf mentor, Danny Nichols, event director for Operation Surf, trying to keep it lighthearted.
Hammit, 38, was catching waves with Operation Surf last Saturday, Sept. 2, on the north side of the Huntington Beach pier to prep for a trip with the group to the United Kingdom. It was his first time using the special prosthetic, which was designed to ride waves.
But the leg became loose during his surf session.
Group members searched the water for the leg before contacting lifeguards. Huntington Beach lifeguard Lt. Claude Panis put on his fins and goggles and spent two hours freediving, looking for the leg.
“It’s kind of like finding a needle in a hay stack” Panis said about his search.
But on Wednesday, Sept. 6, Hammit and his surf leg were reunited, thanks to a Good Samaritan who found it up the coast more than two miles away in Huntington Beach.
A surf brotherhood
Hammit rode his first wave as a kid while on vacation at San Onofre, a smooth surf break just south of San Clemente.
Growing up in Northern California, he would spend weekends surfing at Santa Cruz between classes while going to college.
But when he joined the military in 2006, his favorite pastime was put on hold.
It was in 2009 that the Army special ops Green Beret first injured his right leg after pulling a buddy off a rooftop as they came under fire. Every ligament in his foot and ankle was torn, but he refused to leave his infantry, despite developing severe drop foot.
After multiple surgeries and countless hours of rehab, he fell about 50 feet down a mountain in 2013, re-injuring the same leg.
Then, in 2015 he was “blown off a truck.”
“They couldn’t save my ankle anymore. They cut it below the knee, then they cut it at the knee in April of this year,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be. I wasn’t meant to have it.”
After his leg was amputated, people at a rehab facility in Texas asked, “What do you want to do?”
“Surfing was one of my things,” he said. “I remember how it made me feel and the positive vibes that came from that.”
He was connected with Operation Surf last October and found solace in the surf.
“Yes, it’s about surfing. But it’s so much more than surfing,” he said. “It’s that brotherhood, that bond.”
Surfers are a lot like soldiers, he said.
“The way they charge that water and get that adrenaline rush, it’s the same way we are going into combat. We love it, we love what we do. If you didn’t pay us anything, we’d still do it,” he said.
He said he’s met other people injured in war that ride waves with Operation Surf, one with three limbs missing, others grappling with the emotional struggles that come with PTSD.
“When you get in the water, it doesn’t matter what your disability is. We’re all equal out there,” he said.
Hammit, who is still in active duty and lives in North Carolina, is now an Operation Surf mentor who helps others catch waves. And that’s what he was doing in Huntington Beach, testing out his new surf leg before his trip to help others overseas share the same thrill of riding waves.
Adapt and overcome
Doug Neal was enjoying a day at the beach Sunday near Seapoint Street when he decided to wade waist-deep into the water.
Then he saw it — a foot attached to a prosthetic leg.
“There it was, underwater,” said Neal, a Huntington Beach resident. “It was surreal.”
Neal wondered how long it had been lost — a day? A month? Turns out, the leg had traveled more than two miles in just a day.
A longtime surfer, Neal said he tried to get a hold of lifeguards that could connect the leg with its owner, but with the busy holiday weekend he had no luck. The pair were connected after a news segment aired about the lost prosthetic.
“I’ve been surfing all my life. I know the feeling that you have when you’re out there. There’s no feeling like it,” Neal said. “He can get another leg. But this is his leg, he can get back out there and enjoy.”
Losing the leg didn’t keep Hammit from enjoying the surf — he said he found that surfing without the leg actually helped him drop in better.
“You adapt and overcome, that’s life. Life is going to throw you curve balls,” he said.
But he was glad to have his prosthetic leg back.
“I can’t wait to try and conquer this thing,” he said.
