NAVAL STATION NORFOLK — Late last year, when I spent the day with Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 2 at Naval Station Norfolk, I met an elite group of rescue swimmers. They told me of the need to recruit more sailors into the program. I was invited to return, getting inside access to show you what this team does best.
AW2 Thomas Coyne, an air rescue swimmer and instructor reflected on why he wanted this job in the first place.
"The idea of saving someone's life, or helping someone in some way, was awesome," Coyne explained to me during a recent visit.
WATCH: Navy rescue swimmers in action
HSC-2 is a training squadron. Coyne's job is to teach up-and-coming junior air rescue swimmers before they're sent to their first missions at sea. For him, it's a natural fit.
"I swam competitively for 14 years prior to joining the military, so swimming always came very naturally to me," he says.
However, if you think all Navy rescue swimmers do is hang out at the pool, you don't know the half of it.
"I was not mentally prepared for what I was going to be experiencing," Coyne shared.
CPO Cory Hedges, the squadron's lead training officer, teaches young swimmers how to make split-second, life-saving decisions, under the most intense conditions. It's a skill he had to learn on the job, too.
"I'd never [seen] the ocean before I joined the Navy," Hedges confessed. "I was on the swim team in Colorado, but I never saw anything more than a big lake."
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At sea, on land, and in the air, rescue swimmers always have to be at the ready. In the classroom, sailors learn to act as crew chiefs in the helicopters, knowing how to protect fellow sailors if something goes wrong. Their heads are always in the game.
"You're nervous every time you enter the water and you have somebody's life in your hands," Hedges said. "There's so many things that could happen not only to yourself, but you know, the crew."
The pressure can feel daunting, but there's no beating the feeling of a successful rescue. Hedges has 16 to his credit.
"The best part of saving someone's life is meeting their mom, actually, after the fact," he told me.
Moments like those can give even more meaning to an already important mission — one packed with thrills and the satisfaction of a job well done.
"It gives me a sense of pride," said AW2 Coyne. "Knowing that I'm doing something that I love every single day."
