Déjà View: He Left the Rat Race to Rejoin the SHBP, Watch His Family Grow
Tom Lake with his wife Laraina and children Lily, Hanna, Colin and Ryan
Tom Lake is living his encore at 44. The former Stone Harbor Beach Patrol lieutenant and two-time Around the Island Row winner can pinch himself, entering a third season of a second lifeguard tour this summer.
In the beach-patrol world, it’s the rarest privilege.
Lake first joined the Stone Harbor Beach Patrol in his youth, on his way to somewhere. Unlike the overwhelming majority, he stopped in on the way back, two decades later. Lake savors a second act on the patrol and an adventure that grew out of the first one.
He is an ultra-marathoner now, replacing the endurance model of 20 rowing miles with grueling modern-day pain tests of 50- and 100-mile road races. He actually completed a 100-mile run in 27 hours last December in Virginia. Lake’s new lifeguard tenure in Stone Harbor, which began 19 years after the first one ended, helps bookend the financial-services career he recently left.
Side A: Lake was 23 in 2001, en route to the business world to which lifeguards gravitate from their dream summer job. The lifeguard role cements the work ethic they carry for the next several decades. It’s a one-phase-of-life role for most, relived primarily through reunions.
But not this time.
Side B: Five years ago. About 16 years into his professional life, Lake was married with four young children who were growing up fast. He sold Lincoln Financial products to financial advisers, but it took him away from the family.
One night, driving back from a long business trip to his home in Media, Pa., he became stuck in traffic. And the epiphany occurred.
“I started wondering if this was what life was supposed to look like, or whether I was living someone else’s vision of the ideal life,” Lake recalls. “There were times you were on the road four and five days a week. I had taken all these trips, been in the Diamond Club for all these hotels. I started picturing my kids getting older and thinking of all the things I wish I could have been doing when I had the revelation. We only get one shot in this life.
“I also had a friend pass away at the same time and realized, ‘Hey, man, life is short.’”
His dilemma could have been a classic midlife crisis, with no choice involved. But Lake says his wife Laraina gave him one. She is an oncology specialist for a pharmaceutical company. That gave him the domestic-life alternative as she brought in the bucks. Lake left the job, looked after the children and pursued an additional outlet. His LinkedIn profile includes the job title, “Pancake Maker.” He has been there with the kids in the morning and afternoon and coached some of their teams. Tom calls Laraina a rock star.
Blast from the past.
A second phase followed through his lifeguard connections. Lake had remained friends with Mike Cras, who had won three consecutive South Jersey rowing titles for the Avalon Beach Patrol in the early 1990s. Cras lived nearby.
“He had a group of guys that would come to his garage and work out,” Lake says. “He said, ‘Let’s get back in shape.’ I still remember that first night. I was doing pushups on my knees, and back in the day I could have done them to the moon and back. But that night was really hard.
“Over time, Mike helped me get my butt back in shape.”
And not just any shape. Long-distance shape.
Lake had ridden crew at Temple University. He loved endurance athletics, a sense of pushing his body to new limits, backed by the proper mindset. “You enjoy the suffering,” he says with a laugh. He began suffering, and enjoying it, right into the link of a new world. Lake was inspired to enter long-distance races. Some exceeded 50 miles, and he finished them. The one last December was the king, however. It was 100 miles. That’s a long enough way to drive, let alone run.
It was held in Virginia, starting at 6am.
The marathon of marathons is called the Devil Dog Ultras. The 100-miler took place in Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Va., and Lake actually finished it. He was 18th in a field of well over 100. He had run 27 hours straight. He literally ran for more than one entire day. Straight. Try doing anything that long, let alone something physically demanding.
The route encompassed 20 miles. Lake completed five laps to reach the distance, bridging temperatures in the 60s during the day to near-freezing in the wee hours of the morning.
The Devil Dog unfurled some unique logistics.
In this event, contestants have their own headlamps to navigate the terrain in the dark of night. They have pre-placed bags of food along the journey, which represents their pit stops. Runners have an abundance of time to think during the run. Lake reflected on the roots of his earlier career. How a Stone Harbor guard named Tom Popdan once showed him the meaning of dedication, swimming several miles to work from Wildwood Crest.
Or how his Around the Island Row team finished 43rd out of 45 boats in its first year and then won it the next two seasons. He prevailed first with Rob Lythgoe and next with Darrick Kobierowski, who remains one of the area’s premier rowers and has won the event multiple times.
Lake recalled how setting a plan and working relentlessly makes success the only logical outcome. In the eerie wee-hours stillness, other things crept into his head, too.
“You start hallucinating,” he says with a laugh. “You have the headlight lamp and when you see a creek [with the light reflecting off it] you think there are people in there. You start seeing things, your mind starts to play tricks on you. And then you remember that you choose to be out there and that this is fun.”
Fortunately, one encounter was not a hallucination. It was strange, yet uplifting.
“As you can imagine, you don’t see anyone for miles on end,” he says. “The race starts with 120 to 150 people and maybe 40 finish the race. It’s kind of wild. During the daytime, you hear the firing squad from Quantico [the military base nearby] and then at night, nothing. It’s quiet.”
“On this night, I was wearing my SHBP shorts, of all things. I don’t know why, but for some reason I picked them. Around 10 o’clock, I come up to an aid station and a woman says, ‘Is that the Stone Harbor Beach Patrol? I said, ‘Yes, how do you know about it?’ She said, ‘My son is a lifeguard there.’”
What are the odds? Deep in the woods of Virginia comes a link to his past and present eras right here.
Lake enjoyed the company, continued on the journey and completed it around 9am the next day.
He experienced a quiet exhilaration. It had been a monster task, which cost him three toenails that came off during the run. It was hard to walk for a while.
But it was all worthwhile.
In retrospect, it appears fitting that the endurance races would reunite Lake with his long-distance events with the patrol.
In 2020, Lake reached out to SHBP captain Sandy Bosacco, who had made him a lieutenant in the previous life. Bosacco was well aware of how many guards dream of a return to the beach and how few are allowed to do it. The greatest summer job they’ll ever know usually only lasts one season.
But Lake’s family dynamic had lined up.
“I was excited when he came back,” Bosacco says of Lake. “Tom is very dedicated to the patrol, the same way he was over 20 years ago. He is smart, athletic and he has a lot of energy. Tom really loves to help the younger guards and he does anything that’s asked, whether that’s helping with instruction or sitting [guarding] a busy beach.”
Bosacco notes that many guards wish to return to this dream summer job, but the overwhelming majority cannot. One season can’t pay most people’s bills.
Bosacco also touts Lake’s rare distinction of winning consecutive Around the Island Row races with different partners. A doubles pairing often takes three to five years to reach championship chemistry. Stroke rate, timing and the ability to practice long hours together often develop slowly.
But this one was fast-tracked.
Lake starts another lifeguard season this summer, happy to mentor guards just starting their journey.
His family rents in Sea Isle City and he guards in Stone Harbor. Lake is watching his family grow up, addressing the epiphany revealed in the middle of that traffic jam. His children range in age from 7 to 11.
For Tom Lake, everything fits.
The dream morphed into the dream encore.
