A San Diego spearfisherman is proving that not all heroes wear capes — some wear wetsuits — after he unclogged a street drain during the historic January storm, saving his neighbors from the rising floodwaters.
"I have a hobby of spearfishing, and I like to get lobsters and stuff," Jesse Preciado told NBC 7.
He used his wetsuit on Jan. 22 to save lives.
“I would have never thought it dubbed as a superhero suit,” Preciado said.
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Preciado was at work when his brother texted him a photo of his street flooding.
“I’ve never seen the house like that ever in my life, so I told my boss, 'I’ve got to go,'" he said.
When his community needed him, he responded to the call.
“I just knew there was dogs and old people that couldn’t get out the house, and for us to wait, for us to wait for the fire department to show up and actually help everybody, I felt it was going to be too late,” Preciado said.
One of those neighbors was his friend’s father.
“Immediately, I go over there, and I open the door, and when I open the door, I see him standing on top of the table, and he had water up to his neck, and he says that he was already cramped up," Preciado said. "He was scared. He didn’t know how to swim, and I pretty much just grabbed him, and I pulled him out, and I gave him to the people. That’s when I went home, grabbed the wetsuit, and I came back."
This time, he jumped back in the water to swim towards the stormwater drain.
“I was trying to swim a little bit towards that spot, and I’d seen a guy in a kayak, and he was just recording with his phone, so I kind of popped out of nowhere, and I said, 'Hey, do you mind if you take me to that corner over there,'" Preciado said.
When he got to the spot where the storm drain was, a piece of plywood came floating nearby.
“I grabbed it, and then I started pushing it against the curb, so when I felt it hit this bar right here where the trash was at, I just let it go, and I started going under and grabbing it, taking trash out,” he said.
While Jesse was unclogging the storm drainage, his neighbor across the street saw him. He brought out a rake and then helped him unclog another one.
Preciado is grateful his neighbors made it out OK but said preventative measures could have been taken.
“This is the stuff that kind of gets me mad, you know, because if I knew about it, why didn’t the city was aware of it? How come the city didn’t do something about it? You know, why did it have to be me? I don’t know nothing about this type of stuff. I’m just trying to save everybody. You have to save some lives. This has to change, or else we’re going to lose lives,” Preciado said.
Preciado said despite everything his community has endured this past week, they are pulling together.
