Ōtaki Beach near-drowning: Humble hero recounts saving pensioner

A kitesurfer who saved a pensioner from drowning has given a second-by-second account of the rescue, and the humble hero says it was all just luck he was there at the right time.

John Schofield, 74, had plans to visit his sister for coffee after a spot of fishing at Ōtaki Beach north of Wellington on Saturday.

Instead, the father of three ended up being flown to hospital and admitted straight into the intensive care unit.

The man who pulled him from the water, Ramon Glauser, 50, told the Herald he initially thought he was going to have to recover a body.

Kitesurfer Ramon Glauser saved the life of pensioner John Schofield on Saturday. Photo / Supplied

But after getting him to shore, a dazed Schofield told Glauser: “What a nightmare”.

Glauser saw a commotion on the shore while he was kitesurfing.

“There was a guy, he was waving his hands, and he said to me, he yelled out, ‘There’s a body in the water’.”

Schofield had been standing in the water to cast when two strong waves hit him. He lost his balance and tried getting back up, but another wave hit, followed by several more.

Glauser found Schofield: “I could see the top of his skull was showing above the water, his body was completely submerged and his arms were out to the side, like a dead weight.

John Schofield, 74, is lucky to be alive after he was knocked out by freak waves and left face-down in the water at Ōtaki Beach. Photo / Schofield family

“There was no movement, no kicking, no swimming, nothing, just floating. I thought, ‘Oh, this is a retrieval, not a survival story’.”

Glauser grabbed Schofield by the collar of his jacket and pulled his head above the water.

“You could see that, yes, his mouth and eyes were open. He was breathing but in a complete zombie state. The eyes were fixed, not blinking, not moving.”

Glauser’s kite was still pulling at him, helping him to remain above water himself and to keep Schofield up.

He tried pulling Schofield to shore, and as he did, Schofield started to move and splutter, making the effort harder.

“I just said to him, ‘Stay calm, we’re close to the shore, we’re nearly there’, and then eventually we got there ... he’d started blinking ... and then there were times he was sort of coughing and splashing.

“And that’s the first point he made the first statement, which was, ‘What a nightmare’.”

Glauser, a self-described introvert, said the attention on him and his heroics was overwhelming.

“Yes, I did save his life, for sure, because within seconds I would have imagined that he would have been gone. To say I’m a hero is overstating it, though.

“If those people on the shore hadn’t been watching him and saw that he was in the water and raced across, then told me, if those pieces of the puzzle weren’t there, he wouldn’t have survived.

“It was a team effort, for sure. It just happens to be that everybody did their part exactly right for luck to happen.”

Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news and local stories from Tāmaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.