Safety is always on Marissa Sprowles’ mind in her job as a Trunk Bay Beach lifeguard. While she’s there to enforce the rules, her main job is to save lives.
“We watch the water and the beach to make sure everybody’s safe,” she said.
She is a wilderness first-responder, a designation that qualifies her to help sick and injured people in remote locations. Of course, Trunk Bay isn’t that remote, but she uses those same skills to help those in distress.
Sprowles, 30, ticked off a long list of her skills. She can take blood pressure, evaluate heart rates, control bleeding and administer oxygen, to name just a few. Also on the list is the ability to administer cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, a skill she needed recently when an older man had an apparent heart attack in the water. She’s still a bit emotional about the fact she wasn’t able to save him.
Sprowles has worked at Trunk Bay since November, but has many years of lifeguarding and safety experience on her resume. She said this was the first time she was called upon to administer CPR.
While Sprowles’ job is a fulltime V.I. National Park position, her experience on the job counts towards her master’s degree in parks and resource management from Slippery Rock University’s distance learning program. It’s a job she hopes will lead to a career in interpretation with the National Park Service.
Sprowles initially thought she’d “save the world” as an environmental lawyer, but her job interests seemed to lead her in the direction of parks and resource management.
“You find what you like to do and go with the flow,” she said.
She taught swimming as a youth, worked as a lifeguard and supervised at the aquatic center while studying for her bachelor’s degree in history at Ohio University in Athens.
The Toledo native then worked as a lifeguard at Disneyworld resorts and for Ellis Associates, a company that grants lifeguard licenses.
A three-month job as a steward aboard a cruise ship followed. While sailing the seas, she met her husband, Michael Sprowles, who is an archeologist at the St. Thomas Historical Trust.
After the cruise ship job, the two moved to Carnegie, Penn., where returned to her parks and resource management path by working first as an instructor and then manager at Giggles and Smiles, a mall-based children’s activity center popular for birthday parties.
The couple then relocated to the Thousand Islands area of New York, where she was a swim coach and worked in environmental education at Fort Drum.
The move to the Virgin Islands followed.
Sprowles said she likes her job as a lifeguard at Truck Bay, but there are some frustrations with visitors who don’t know the rules or care to follow them.
“Don’t stand on the coral,” she said, repeating one rule she often has to tell visitors.
She said people come to St. John to see the coral but then they don’t respect the resource.
Many also can’t swim but don’t know their limitations. She said people go out too far or knock their snorkel mask off their faces, putting them in danger.
As for the future, she said she and her husband to plan to stay in the Virgin Island for several years.
“I like the warm weather,” she said.
