The Day My Family Almost Drowned

When fun at the beach turned into a battle for her family’s life, Roberta Ursrey prayed for a miracle —  and found it in a group of heroic strangers.

- Jonathan Small

ROBERTA URSREY FLAILED HER LEGS AND ARMS WILDLY, trying to hold her head above the choppy ocean water. She was between her sons, Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8, who clung to their bodyboards, shivering and frightened out of their minds as they struggled with a rip current that had pulled them 100 yards off Panama City Beach in Florida. Roberta, a 34-year-old mother of four, tried to assure them they’d be fine, but “I honestly thought I was going to lose them that day,” she says — and her own life as well.

A half hour earlier, Roberta had just come out of the restroom when she saw that the boys, who had been playing in shallow water, were suddenly far from shore. Roberta called to them to come in closer — and heard them scream to her for help. “I threw my phone down, and I went in,” she says. “People told me not to, but I was like, I don’t care — those are my kids and I’m going.” She reached her children, but no matter how hard she tried to pull them ashore, the powerful undertow sucked them all away again. “I thought I was a good swimmer, but the tide proved me wrong,” she says. “We tried swimming to the side and backward, and it didn’t work — we were pulled right back out.”

Roberta and her boys weren’t alone in the water on that hot afternoon in July 2017; her 68-year-old mother, Barbara, and her nephew had also run in to attempt to help, but had been dragged out too. Nearby, a couple visiting from Asia clung to waterlogged pool noodles as their children screamed, in hysterical tears, from the shore. And her husband, Bryan, who had taken their daughters for a walk and had at first been unaware of the unfolding emergency, had raced in after his family and been pulled out as well. In all, nine adults and kids were caught in the deadly riptide.