Swim school instructor inspired by childhood water emergency
MIAMI - A man who has been running a well known South Florida swim school for years said he was inspired by a water emergency when he was young.
May is National Water Safety Month and it's important, especially down here, that children know how to swim.
Alvaro Nunez knows this firsthand.
"When I was very young, I was on vacation with my parents, and I pulled a little girl out of the pool," he said.
Nunez said he was just eight years old at the time and it stayed with him. At 16 he became a lifeguard. Today he owns the Little Swimmers swim school in Kendall.
The school offers individual lessons for children as young as eight months old. His oldest student, a Korean War vet.
"He did not know how to swim and why did he want to learn how to swim? He had grandchildren and grandparents want to be in the water with their kids," he said.
Nunez stressed the importance of learning how to swim at any age.
"We live in Miami, there is water all around us. There are canals, there are rivers, there are lakes, their pools. Everybody has a pool," he said.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the leading cause of death in children one to four years old. For children five to 14, it's the second leading cause of unintentional injury or death, nearly 80 percent are male.
"There's peer pressure involved. There are parties that they go to, especially roughhousing at parties. We all know what can happen," said Nunez.
Learning how to swim, and being able to save yourself in the case of an emergency, Nunez said is truly a matter of life or death.
"This is something that needs to be indoctrinated into every child, every parent should do this," he said.
The Little Swimmers program is two weeks. Nunez said after a week children learn to, at least, get back to the wall to save themselves if they fall in.
For parents or guardians stretched thin, several organizations provide scholarships for free lessons, including the International Swimming Hall of Fame's program called Every Child a Swimmer. The goal of the non-profit is to get as many children as possible in the pool and in swim lessons. They provide low to no cost scholarships for qualifying children.