Two Fishermen Save Little Girl After Shipwreck Devastated Her Family — 35 Years Later She Finds Them

Nov 12, 2021 by apost team

In May 1986, Desireé Rodriguez Campuzano, 9, was stranded alone in the Pacific ocean after her family’s boat capsized off the coast of Catalina Island near Long Beach, California. Campuzano and her family had started their journey out onto the water as part of a routine fishing trip, but the excursion turned deadly when their boat started filling with water miles from land, as the Los Angeles Times reports in a March 10, 2021, article.

Campuzano, her mother, father, aunt, uncle and 5-year-old sister were surrounded by open water and fog, and the chilly waters of the Pacific eventually took all of their lives — except 9-year-old Campuzano’s. Even though she had a life jacket on, she wouldn’t last long on her own. After spending hours floating alone in the ocean, Paul Strasser and Mark Pisano, who were aboard a commercial fishing boat, miraculously spotted Campuzano’s life jacket in the water. As soon as Pisano saw that Campuzano was alive, he stripped down to his underwear, dove in and grabbed her life jacket.

“I don’t think I would have lived, I’ll be honest with you. I think at that point, I was just kind of done,” Campuzano told The Times.

When Strasser and Pisano reached land, Campuzano was rushed to the hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia and exhaustion. Following the traumatic loss of her parents and other family members, another aunt and uncle adopted Campuzano. She also received therapy, though Campuzano told The Times that it didn’t really help. Beyond that, no one spoke to Campuzano about her experience, as they didn’t want to retraumatize her. What’s more, she never got to speak to or thank Strasser and Pisano.

“Desireé was a ghost,” Strasser told The Times. “We saved her, she’s out in the world. And that’s all we know. We had no clues on anybody that knew how to get ahold of her.”

Campuzano also wondered about the two men who saved her. She even tried to contact Oprah Winfrey to see if she could help track them down. But for decades, Campuzano, Strasser and Pisano never made contact.

As if Campuzano’s life isn’t extraordinary enough, something remarkable happened. In December 2020, Philip Friedman launched a podcast where he interviews fishermen, and one episode featured Pisano speaking about Campuzano’s rescue.

Pisano said that when he told the story, he felt a tingle crawl up his spine.

“My brain was like, I’m going to try to locate her,” Friedman told The Times. “We’ve got to finish this story!”

The day the episode was posted, 41-year-old Pablo Peña listened to the story on his commute, which led to a realization. Peña had spoken to a woman 17 years earlier who had told a similar story.

 “It started to churn my wheels, and I was like, well, it could be her,” Peña told The Times. “But he would have to say her name was Desireé Rodriguez to make this solid.”

Moments later, Pisano said Desireé’s name on the podcast. Peña, who describes coincidence as surreal, contacted Friedman, who in turn planned to surprise Pisano and Strasser at the studio. He invited the two fishermen along with Campuzano, but he said that she was a translator. Eventually, however, she revealed her identity.

Many tears were shed as Campuzano reunited with her rescuers.

“I feel like she’s sort of our daughter, in a way, because we brought her back to life,” Strasser told The Times. “Even though we never knew each other.”

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