Conflicting details in Kirk's 1976 lake rescue

Conflicting details in Kirk's 1976 lake rescue
By Todd Lighty and John Chase, Tribune reporters
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
11:58 p.m. CDT, July 22, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/ct-met-kirk-coast-guard-20100722,0,6257134,full.story


Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk for a decade has told the story of how he nearly drowned when he was 16 while sailboating on Lake Michigan and how his rescue by the Coast Guard inspired him to pursue a career in public service.

The story is sprinkled with attention-grabbing details, but there are inconsistencies in Kirk's statements that suggest parts of his real-life drama have been embellished, a Tribune review has found.

In the most recent instance, the 50-year-old North Shore congressman told a boating magazine that he stood on his overturned sailboat and watched the sun set, when in fact he was rescued in midafternoon on June 15, 1976.

Kirk also has said he swam up to a mile in 42-degree water and that he was rescued with his body temperature hovering two degrees from death. Those declarations are questionable, based on interviews with an eyewitness and medical experts.

Basic elements of Kirk's story are not in dispute. He did capsize his boat, was pulled from the water by the Coast Guard and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. He said any inconsistencies in news accounts or his own words are minor and do not diminish the significance of the traumatic, life-changing experience.

"This is one of the most important events in my life. I was not as well-focused before this event but very well-focused after, aware of your own mortality," Kirk told the Tribune in a recent interview while standing near the spot on Lake Michigan where he set sail in 1976. "But … 34 years ago as a 16-year-old, this is the way I remember it."

It is not the first time this year Kirk has had to reconcile his public statements about major moments in his life with records that contradict him or don't back up the details as he tells them. Questions about Kirk's descriptions of his military career have become a significant issue in his race with Democratic state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias to fill the seat once held by President Barack Obama.

Kirk, a Navy Reserve officer, recently apologized for repeatedly overstating his military achievements, from claiming an award for his intelligence unit as his own to saying he came under enemy fire while flying intelligence missions over Iraq. Stung by criticism, Kirk now declines to talk about his Navy service and instead refers questioners to his military records.

The Tribune examined the boating story in light of Kirk's acknowledgment that he overstated his military career.

The inconsistencies in the rescue story may not have the same galvanizing impact of inflating a military resume, but they raise a new set of questions about whether Kirk has added details to his true-life stories that make a better storyline.

According to news accounts and interviews, Kirk and a friend took Kirk's family Sunfish sailboat, a small craft, out from a Kenilworth beach in the afternoon and quickly ran into trouble keeping the boat upright. After dropping off his friend on a nearby private beach, Kirk went out alone to try to return the sailboat but capsized repeatedly.

The Wilmette Life, in an account published two days after the accident, began its story this way: "A Kenilworth youth was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, Tuesday afternoon, after his sailboat capsized in Lake Michigan about one-half mile off Winnetka."

The paper, which cited a Coast Guard chief by name, said Kirk was wearing a ski belt flotation device around his waist and was found drifting about 500 yards from the boat. The story said Kirk was in the water for at least 30 minutes before the Coast Guard rescued him at 2:52 p.m. He suffered from exposure and was taken by ambulance to Evanston Hospital, where he was treated and released, the paper said.

Kirk does not dispute that account, which he has included on his congressional Web site, but in a recent interview he included details that conflict with that story.

Soundings, a boating magazine, carried one of the most detailed accounts of Kirk's story in its July issue. Reporter Chris Landry recorded his half-hour telephone interview. He said he asked Kirk to recount what had happened.

"I just wanted him to tell the story right from the beginning," Landry said. "It made for a good story."

In the story, Kirk twice refers to being on the water as darkness fell.

"I lost the halyard and ended up watching the sunset standing on the upside-down boat with only a ski belt on," Kirk said, according to the quote in the story and the recording Landry played for the Tribune.

Kirk also noted a teenager on shore saw him struggling with the sailboat and called for help. "It was unusual because Sunfishes come home at night and this one wasn't," Kirk told the magazine.

But witness Bruce Guthrie, who was 13 at the time when he alerted authorities, remembers the entire incident playing out in the afternoon.

Guthrie told the Tribune he was putting shingles on his family's lakeside gazebo when he noticed the sailboat repeatedly capsizing, about a quarter-mile to a half-mile from shore. "I could just tell he was in trouble," Guthrie said.

Pressed on the timing of the rescue, Kirk told the Tribune the magazine reporter must have made a mistake. Informed the interview was recorded, Kirk then said he did not watch the sunset but denied embellishing his story.

"I mean I was worried that the sun would go down and I would be in the dark at night, which is why I didn't want to be there," Kirk told the Tribune.

Kirk has also said he swam up to a mile in 42-degree water in an aborted effort to reach shore, which he has described as anywhere from a mile to two miles away.

"I dove in for about a two-mile swim … thinking that I had swum a mile once in a high school pool, so if my life depended on it, I could probably do this," Kirk told Soundings magazine. "I got only about halfway and went through a classic near-death experience — reviewed my life, began to see the light."

During a news conference in April about cuts to the Coast Guard, Kirk talked about why it was important to keep two rescue stations open on Lake Michigan, saying the Coast Guard got to him just in time.

"The Coast Guard reported that my body temperature was around 82 degrees," Kirk said at that news conference. "Around 80 degrees is when your heart stops. And so, it was a just-in-time rescue."

The Coast Guard said it could not locate records from Kirk's rescue. The Coast Guard chief quoted in the 1976 article told the Tribune he could not recall the incident.

Kirk has told the story of his rescue many times with the confidence of a man whose experience was burned into memory.

"I should be at the bottom of the lake," Kirk told the Tribune during his first run for Congress in 2000. "And to be given a second chance means it has to mean something. For me, that means making a difference through public service, and it all comes from the lake."

In his recent interview with the Tribune, though, he said he could not recall how he knows some of the most colorful details.

Asked about the distance from shore and how far he swam, Kirk said he could not be sure because he had lost his eyeglasses in the water.

Asked how he knows the exact water temperature and body temperature, Kirk said he could not remember where he got the numbers. His campaign later provided a statement from his mother saying she remembered his body temperature was in the 80s when she saw him under a warming blanket at the hospital.

But medical experts said it was extremely unlikely Kirk's body temperature dropped to 82 in the half-hour plus he was in the water, even if it was 42 degrees as Kirk has said. As the body cools below the normal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, shivering sets in and hypothermia begins at a much earlier stage — 95 degrees, experts say.

Had Kirk's temperature reached 82 degrees, he likely would have been unable to swim and would have lost consciousness, three experts told the Tribune.

"It seems unlikely he could exert himself," said Dr. David Beiser, a University of Chicago doctor who specializes in emergency medicine. "That temperature is the temperature at which you have a high likelihood of your heart stopping."

Dr. Alan Steinman, former director of health and safety for the U.S. Coast Guard and an expert in sea survival, said, "Swimming a mile in 42-degree water is not realistic."

"Not only would he likely lose consciousness from severe hypothermia before he reached a mile distance, but it's probable he would have been unable to use his arms and legs effectively to swim for an hour in 42-degree water," Steinman said. "Whether his core temperature cooled to 82 degrees is still questionable, and if he were that severely hypothermic — and likely unconscious — it is unlikely the hospital would have treated and released him."

Kirk told the Tribune he had capsized repeatedly and so was in the water for longer than just after the last time the boat flipped. He said he had stopped swimming and was in and out of consciousness as the Coast Guard rescued him.

"I think what is clear is I was so cold that I was close to death," Kirk said.

tlighty@tribune.com

jchase@tribune.com