CASUAL LUKE RIDES THE BIG WAVE

Earlier this year, a little-known North Shore lifeguard named Luke Shepardson paddled out during his break and won the world's most prestigious big-wave competition. And now? Well, Casual Luke just wants to get back to work.

-  Gabriella Paiella

THE most remarkable day of Luke Shepardson's life started in traffic. So much traffic. An unmoving, unending line of cars tracing the wild blue coast of the North Shore of Oahu.

Crowds had been flocking there all night and all morning, their vehicles jamming up the typically sleepy two-lane road that gets you in and out of these parts. Infrastructure-wise, Waimea Bay isn't exactly meant to host one of the world's most-storied sporting events. But every once in a while, when the waves are just right, it does. The famed Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational is the rarest of rare surf contests, one that defies human scheduling and relies instead on the whims of nature. It requires exceptionally specific conditions: Waves in Waimea Bay must reliably reach an awesome, gut-churning height of 40 feet minimum. Even though the contest-named in honor of the legendary Native Hawaiian lifeguard and big-wave surfer Eddie Aikau-has been going since 1985, this was only its 10th run.

The chosen few who are invited to compete will drop everything and fly in from Australia and Tahiti, Brazil and Portugal. So when word got out in January that the contest was on, the world's best surfers began racing to Waimea.

Luke was racing there too. He had to get to work, lifeguarding at the Eddie. His boss called him at 6:30 that morning to tell Luke he was needed on the beach, stat. The drive from his house usually takes all of five minutes. Now he was stalled a half mile away, not getting anywhere anytime soon.

Having grown up here, Luke knew full well the commotion that the Eddie could bring, but he'd never seen anything like this. As he sat idling in his beat-up 2001 Toyota Highlander, he thought about everything that was hanging on him. Up here on the North Shore, good, stable jobs can be hard to come by.