Rick Rasmussen’s short life played out like something out of a movie — Catch Me If You Can meets Scarface. Sadly, it played out as such right down to the gruesome Tony Montana-esque ending. In his beyond-wild 27 years, Rasmussen made enough bad decisions to fill a handful of lifetimes, all the while surfing his ass off. The latter part of his story is a retro surf fantasy: East Coast ripper wins the U.S. Surfing Championship crown by 19 then goes on to get the thumbs up from Gerry Lopez as the premier tube rider by charging Pipe and ushering in the early days of Uluwatu’s world class fame.
Waves weren’t Rasmussen’s only business in Indonesia, though. The local authorities busted him with a kilo of cocaine in Bali, earning him three months in an Indonesian prison before he would eventually be acquitted. Back stateside in 1981, he sold half a million dollars worth of heroin to an undercover agent in New York. Then, less than a year later — while awaiting sentencing on those trafficking charges — he was shot and killed during another drug deal.
Told you: scenes out of a movie. You know what else plays like Hollywood gold though? The last wave of this video.
