People

Captain Melbourne LeRoy “Butch” Arbin III navigates a white Chevy Blazer along the beach as communications from headquarters crackle over the CB radio. The air is thick and heavy with a sweet smell of coconut-scented suntan lotion; the Atlantic churns, and teenage boys ride boogie boards atop foamy, rolling waves.

“Moderate cell moving northeast,” the dispatcher says.

It’s summer in Ocean City—hot, humid, and hazy, the perfect ingredients for a pop-up thunderstorm. Doppler radar shows a red blob heading in like some monster about to devour the resort town.

After 38 years with the Ocean City Beach Patrol (OCBP), the last 13 as captain, Arbin has seen just about everything: children buried by sand cave-ins, beached whales, bomb threats, plane crashes, more water rescues than he can remember, and even projectile umbrellas.

“When the wind blows, you get really funny currents around the condos,” he says, recalling a gust that launched a beach umbrella into the air, tearing away its canvas cover and sending a metal skeleton back to earth, where a quarter-inch rod became lodged in a man’s head. Miraculously, he required nothing more than a few stitches.

Arbin, an instructional technology resource teacher for Charles County Public Schools, is dressed in his summer business attire—white polo, blue swim trunks, dock shoes, and shades. At 53, he maintains the zeal for adventure and commitment to making a difference exhibited when he first joined the OCBP in 1973 at the age of 15.

Not that the late Robert Craig—an Ocean City legend who commanded the OCBP from 1935 to 1986—hired the young Baltimore County athlete immediately.

“I remember talking to Captain Craig at the time and just being pretty full of myself,” recalls Arbin. “I was a pole vaulter. Captain Craig looked at me and said, ‘Well, son, if I need someone to pole vault over the pier, I’ll call you.’ He put me in my place.”

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Arbin and his team of 200 men and women, most between the age of 18 and 22, keep vigil over 10-and-a-half miles of beaches. “We have a saying,” explains Arbin. “‘There are hours of boredom and moments of trauma.’”

Established in 1930, the OCBP has distinguished itself as one of the most respected beach patrol organizations in the nation, noted for its professionalism and three-part mission: education, prevention, and intervention.

“We deal with rescues, but more than rescues, we deal with the preventatives, where guards are blowing the whistle and moving [people] out of danger,” Arbin says. “Second thing we deal with is informing people about safety or the ordinances and laws on the beach.

“The rescue part of the job hasn’t changed for 40 years,” he continues. “We’re hiring somebody for their ability to use their God-given physical skills to keep other people safe. It’s like recruiting pro athletes, because there’s no technology we have that does the job. It’s a lifeguard and buoy making 99 percent of our rescues. What has changed is our emphasis on education and prevention.”

In 2009, the OCBP made approximately 70,000 preventions and 3,400 rescues.

In addition to completing the Surf Rescue Academy, guards must pass a series of physical tests, including a 300-meter soft-sand run in less than 65 seconds and a 400-meter ocean swim in less than 10 minutes before earning the rank of Surf Rescue Technician (SRT), a title coined by Arbin to emphasize the responsibilities of the OCBP: medical emergencies, search and recovery, and marine-mammal rescue, to name a few. Occasionally, an SRT will even have to recommend a good spot for a crab cake.

“The Ocean City Beach Patrol, in lifesaving circles, has a really good reputation as professional, as doing it right,” Arbin says, crediting the young men and women who do the job for raising the bar.