Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $510,283 In 2021
Baywatch needs to go on pay watch!
Who knew that LA lifeguards—who work in the sun, ocean surf, and golden sands of California— could reap such unbelievable financial reward?
It’s time we put Baywatch on pay watch. In 2019, we found top-paid lifeguards made up to $392,000.
Unfortunately, today, the pay and benefits are even more lucrative.
Daniel Douglas was the most highly paid and earned $510,283, an increase from $442,712 in 2020. As the “lifeguard captain,” he out-earned 1,000 of his peers: salary ($150,054), perks ($28,661), benefits ($85,508), and a whopping $246,060 in overtime pay.
The second highest paid, lifeguard chief Fernando Boiteux, pulled down $463,517 – up from $393,137 last year.
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 98 LA lifeguards earned at least $200,000 including benefits last year, and 20 made between $300,000 and $510,283. Thirty-seven lifeguards made between $50,000 and $247,000 in overtime alone.
And it’s not only about the cash compensation. After 30 years of service, LA lifeguards can retire as young as 55 on 79-percent of their pay.
Furthermore, we found that most of the top-paid lifeguards were men. In fact, only two of the top 20 high-earners were women: Virginia Rupe ($307,664; 16th highest paid), a lifeguard captain, and Lauren Dale ($303,518; 19th highest paid), an ocean lifeguard specialist.
Overtime pay drove earnings into the corporate executive range.
Last year alone, 37 lifeguards made overtime in amounts between $50,000 and $247,000. For example, Daniel Douglas (overtime: $246,060); James Orr (overtime: 146,506); Patrick O’Neil (overtime: $133,235); and five others each made six-figures plus.
However, in a six-year period, between 2016 and 2021, the LA lifeguard corps made a fortune in overtime. The top three high earners made between $505,579 and $980,007 in overtime alone: Daniel Douglas ($980,007); Jaro Spopek ($513,365); and James Orr ($505,579).
Some high-earning lifeguards also win awards for heroism. However, we found many lifeguards winning Valor Awards failed to crack the top of the payroll.
In 2020, the Medal of Valor winner, Edward “Nick” Macko (salary: $134,144), an ocean lifeguard, jumped into the rough waters in a remote Palos Verdes gorge and pulled a man to safety through potentially skull-crushing swells and over razor-sharp rocks.
In 2021, the Exemplary Service Award for EMS went to lifeguards Todd Ribera (comp: $184,676); Stephen Leon Jr. (comp: $36,597); Max Malamed (comp: $130,952); and Blake Hubbell (comp: $170,956).
Also winning Exemplary Service Awards were high-earners: ocean lifeguard specialist Lauren Dale ($303,518), the 19th highest paid lifeguard, and lifeguard captain Roque Roque ($319,566), the sixth highest paid in 2020.
Beach lifeguard pay dwarfs that of their colleagues at the pools. The highest paid “pool lifeguard” made $45,030, including pay and benefits.
During the pandemic, lifeguards continued to work and took additional precautions doing water rescues. Many traded their trunks and sunscreen for masks and scrubs at Covid testing sites. In some cases, lifeguards acted as police, enforcing stay-at-home orders, keeping people off the beaches and out of the water.
Why beach lifeguards earn so much money is an open question the L.A. taxpayer might start asking.
A lifeguard’s job can be dangerous, but it’s unclear why they are now paid up to a half million dollars a year.
After two years of requesting comment from the county and after three requests this year alone, a spokesperson finally responded with an official statement:
“The Los Angeles County Fire Department had approximately 166 full-time Ocean Lifeguards and 600 seasonal recurrent Ocean Lifeguards. All our lifeguards, including those in leadership positions, have taken on an enormous responsibility. They are responsible for protecting 72 miles of coastline, 10,526 square miles of open ocean waters, Catalina Island, and 1,686 square miles of Los Angeles County inland waterways.
In that same year, we had over 50 million beachgoers and our lifeguards executed over 9,286 ocean rescues and responded to over 13,303 medical calls. During large scale brush fires, our lifeguards take on additional responsibilities to work on specialized incident management teams to support firefighters all over the state – as they did in 2021 when wildfires burned an estimated 2,568,948 acres here in California. Additionally, our lifeguards were a critical part of the COVID-19 response efforts. The Lifeguard Division provided personnel, logistics, and incident management qualifications to support COVID-19 Testing and COVID-19 vaccinations all over the County of Los Angeles."
Further Reading
Forbes, Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $392,000 In 2019
The Wall Street Journal, The ‘$392,000 Lifeguard’: Baywatch As A Union Shop
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com compiled these numbers from Freedom of Information Act requests as well as benefit data listed at Transparent California.
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I am a retired beach lifeguard captain for LA county. The writer of this article rightly questions these wages. What the author fails to touch on are the policies that create the scenarios where these individuals are racking up huge amounts of overtime. Many of these scenarios involved pulling lifeguards out of their beach assignments, to go work as part of logistical support teams on wildfires. While some of these assignments might involve using their medical training, most of these assignments are clerical or tech support in nature, skills that don’t require the specialization of a lifeguard to perform. Quite a few of these logistical/support assignments could be easily performed by office personnel who have completed the required courses making them eligible to fill those roles.
Another point that the author fails to mention, is that when Lifeguard or Fire personnel are deployed to these major incidents, someone has to backfill their regular assignments. This is done with overtime. Almost very time a lifeguard or firefighter is assigned to one of these major incidents, it creates double overtime. Towards the end of my career for two summers I worked between 150-160 hours of overtime each month , June, July, and August. All this overtime was in assignments on the beach, and a majority of it was me backfilling someone who had been taken out of their beach assignment and deployed to do logistical support on a major incident.
One thing the tax payers of LA county need to know, is that when a lifeguard or firefighter is deployed to one of these incidents, the county is able to recoup the cost of their wages from either the state or the feds. That includes the personnel that end up backfilling those deployed.
What this author and the taxpayers of LA county need to look into are the policies that take create all this overtime. The author and the taxpayers also need to look into other options like using not as highly paid office personnel, or even retirees to fill these logistical roles at major incidents.
I can say as a State-trained Ocean Lifeguard, who's worked at the ONLY private beach in the state, that Ocean Lifeguards have an enormous responsibility, and do highly skilled, hard, and important work. LA is a very expensive place to live, and Permanent Guards who do the job well, deserve to be well-compensated, and offered a career that receives comparable pay to Firefighters and Cops. And based upon what you've shown here, THEY DO. Almost every LA County Lifeguard I've ever met, permanent or season, it well-trained and highly competent. I know at least one of the Guards on that list. Minus his Overtime pay - his salary and benefits seem generous, but not unreasonable. And the secret of Overtime - is that you have to work long hours to earn it.
By law, you get time and half pay for those hours - sometimes more. So, unless we think that the Overtime hours are being doled out on some invidious and discriminatory or improperly politicized basis...I can't really object to people earning it, if they're doing a good job.
There may be some reasonable calculus involved, regarding whether you assign overtime hours, or you just hire more people, which adds more benefits, personnel and hiring costs. All told - aside from their apparent complicity in the Nuremberg Crimes surrounding 'Covid-19 policy' - I can't really complain about the LA County Lifeguards, or the service that they provide to the community. They work hard, and paying them well ensures that you have highly motivated, well trained emergency and rescue services, when you need them. And as a surfer and private/volunteer lifeguard, I exist and work closely with and alongside them, on a daily basis.
Pool guards, by contrast, earn much less, but also have much less specialized or challenging job. Not to denigrate them, but that's an Apples and Oranges comparison. That's a job usually done with much less training, by kids in highschool or college. It's largely uneventful, and requires much less physical fitness, or specialized knowledge and experience. Literally anyone who can swim, and perform CPR/First Aid, can do it. And the numbers on rescues per hour worked, show the differences.
A better group to investigate along these lines - are the notoriously and perennially corrupt, inept and incompetent LAPD. I know personally of a Senior Lead Officer (ACOSTA) who earns more the $300k a year, while actively refusing to assist the community with an identified public nuisance at a local park - and in fact, may even be conspiring with those who are creating the nuisance, that he won't act substantially to abate.