Victim Transported to Scripps La Jolla

On the afternoon of Thursday, 12 October 2023, Coast Guard Sector San Diego personnel respond to a medical emergency aboard a charter fishing vessel christened Legend, then approximately 48-nautical-miles off the Pacific Coast of Southern California’s Point Loma.

At approximately 13:00 PDT, Coast Guard Sector San Diego watchstanders received a distress call from a Legend crew-member reporting a 79-year-old male passenger had lost consciousness and fallen. The victim’s symptoms were consistent with a cardiac event.

Coast Guard personnel, having determined the imperiled passenger required an immediate and higher level of medical care, dispatched an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from USCG Air Station San Diego.

The MH-60 crew arrived on scene, hoisted the patient successfully aboard the helicopter, and transported him to Scripps La Jolla.

The swift response and coordinated efforts demonstrated by the watchstanders and flight-crew personnel of Coast Guard Sector San Diego exemplified the service’s dedication to ensuring the safety and well-being of all mariners in distress and saving lives at sea.

Created by Congress as the Revenue-Marine on 04 August 1790, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) is the oldest continuously operating naval service of the United States. The Semper Paratus (Always Ready) motto to which the Coast Guard aspires speaks to the outfit’s ethos and the nature of its humanitarian and security missions.

Stated simply, the Coast Guard protects the United States' borders and defends her sovereignty by safeguarding sea lines of communication and commerce across 95,000-miles of U.S. coastline and the entirety of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. This critical work is carried out by 44,500 active-duty personnel, 7,000 reservists, and 8,577 full-time civilian employees.

The USCG’s fleet of roughly 250 coastal and ocean-going cutters, patrol ships, buoy tenders, tugs, and icebreakers; as well as nearly two-thousand small boats and specialized craft constitutes the world’s 12th largest naval force. The service’s aviation division comprises north of two-hundred helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft the likes of the AC-37A (Gulfstream V), HC-144A (Airbus CN-235), and Lockheed’s mighty HC-130 Hercules utility turboprop transport. To supplement the aforementioned and better support its homeland security and search & rescue operations, the Coast Guard is building an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program around General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper platform.

In its humanitarian capacity, the U.S. Coast Guard saves tens-of-thousands of lives every year and provides emergency response and disaster management for all manner of man-made emergencies, meteorological exigencies, and outright natural disasters.

FMI: www.uscg.mil