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On Friday, October 13 of 2022, Coco Nogales came very close to dying. He was surfing a wave called Killers off Isla Todos Santos when a set caught him out of position. He broke his pelvis and sacrum, injuries that routinely result in massive internal bleeding, but thankfully he was rescued and is currently almost fully healed. The surfboard he was riding at the time vanished, but on January 26th, something incredible happened. Nogales found it after a year of wondering what happened to it.
I spoke with Nogales a few weeks after his accident, and his description of what happened was a hard thing to listen to.
“The doctor told me this type of fracture is really rare in surfing,” Coco told me. “It normally happens with motorcycle accidents. He told me that I could have died, and not just when I was under the water. I also could have died when they transitioned me into the boat. I was so afraid that I would be in a wheelchair. I couldn’t move my hip or my leg… I was so afraid.”
Surprisingly, Nogales remembered exactly what happened in the heat of the moment when he went down.
“I felt the lip compress me deep down and at the same time, I got pulled on my leg,” he continued. “The board is a big wave board and the leash is as strong as a metal cable. There’s no flexibility. The wave broke right in front of me, and it pushed me and the board with all its energy, but it pushed me down and pushed the board away from me. In that moment, I felt a crack into my ass and my coccyx.”
Facing the power of the ocean, Nogales knew there was nothing he could do but inflate his vest, grit his teeth, and try and survive. Two more waves landed on him before he was finally able to grab onto a sled on the back of a PWC piloted by a lifeguard named Roger from San Diego. After a painfully bumpy ride to the boat in the channel, Greg Long and Jamie Mitchell, both of whom are intensely involved with big wave safety, took the reins.
Coco Nogales, strapped in and ready to go to Ensenada, where he would be turned away after two days. Photo: Greg Long//GoFundMe
“I was screaming and crying in that moment,” Coco said. “I was so scared. They took me off the sled and onto the boat. Greg asked me if I could squeeze his hand and I could. Jamie asked me if I could feel my fingers and toes, and I could… Greg told me I was going to be okay and I just closed my eyes. He gave me a little relief.”
As it turned out, the nightmare was far from over. You can read about his road to recovery here, but the worst was yet to come. Doctors in Ensenada misdiagnosed his injuries, so for two days he languished in agony, alone in a bed. Finally, he was sent to a private hospital, where the true extent of his injuries was discovered. He would need to undergo surgery to repair his shattered body, and he needed to get to the U.S. to get it.
“In that moment I just wanted to have the best care,” Coco said. “It gave me some peace in my heart. I stopped crying and I was able to smile.”
To take an ambulance or a helicopter from Mexico into the U.S., however, would cost an absolute fortune and be clogged with paperwork. So Greg Long made the call.
“Greg just said, ‘fuck it, we’re going to go in the van,’” Coco explained. “They put me in the van and we got to the border. One of my friends who was with us didn’t have his passport, and I needed to pay the border crossing. Greg told the officers that I was in the back and injured. They said, ‘you know what? Just go.’”
After surgeons pinned him back together, Nogales began the long road of rehab. He’s back surfing again, although tentatively, and the closest call he’s ever had is in the rearview. But he always wondered what became of the board he was riding on that fateful day.
“After the accident I asked a couple of friends if anyone knew where my board had gone,” he wrote on Instagram. “No one knew anything. For a whole year I kept asking myself where the pieces of board had been after being caught by that large set of waves that not only fractured my pelvis and sacrum but also broke my board along with the leash.”
“Upon returning to the boat,” he continued, “I told a great friend and cameraman Chuy Salazar that I would have liked to have that board. Suddenly, he said ‘Coco, I think your board is on the island. From what you tell me, I think we saw it a few days ago.'”
Salazar gave him the general location of it, and Coco went hunting. Amazingly, it was there — snapped in two and a little worse for wear after a year in the elements, but it was there, lying in the tall grass as though it was waiting for him. It was the final page of a story that Nogales was eager to finish.
“Returning to the island and finding a piece of my board that I was surfing on during that experience, was unique and very special feeling,” he said. “I was happy. It gave me a lot of peace because I finally felt like I was closing a chapter.”
