Going the distance

Albert Perez was scheduled to swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco in a few days, and it wasn’t looking good.

For starters, he could barely move. Perez, who owns Brisky & Perez Insurance Agency in Brownsville with his wife, Linda, had only worn a wetsuit one other time in his life. He didn’t realize they had to be stretched out before you put them on. Otherwise, one’s mobility is severely diminished, as Perez realized during his initial practice swim in preparation for the big event.

There were other issues — sharks for instance. Perez is terrified of them. But he put it out of his mind as best he could as he waded into the cold, murky water of San Francisco’s Aquatic Park, which opens into San Francisco Bay. Then he spotted a dark shape on the sand below the surface. Gulf Coast native that he is, Perez’s first thought was stingrays. Perfect — just what he needed.

"I just don’t like really being in the water when I can’t see what’s below," Perez says. "Now I’m thinking of stingrays, sharks, seals and the cold water."

Things got better over the next few days. With the aid of a savvy coach, subsequent practice swims went, well, swimmingly. Perez swam faster and his confidence grew. He learned San Francisco Bay has no stingrays. Finally, on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 13, Perez boarded the boat that would ferry him and a group of two dozen others to Alcatraz, aka the Rock, the infamous maximum-security prison that had housed some of the 20th century’s most notorious criminals before closing in 1963.

How did a Brownsville native wind up in San Francisco Bay dodging sharks? It all goes back to June 2007. Perez was in a room at the Omni Hotel in Corpus Christi. The TV was on. Shaquille O’Neal was starring in a reality show about obese children, who were so out of shape they couldn’t do a single push up. Perez, who’d been a swimmer as a youth and even competed on the Blue Dolphins swim team, was now in his early 50s and pushing 250 pounds. He dropped down on the carpet to see how many pushups he could do.

The results were embarrassing — a few pushups at most were all he could manage.

"Everything hurt," he says. "My hands hurt. My ribs hurt. Everything hurt. That just kind of turned on a light bulb and I said it’s time to start getting in shape."

Perez lost several pounds working out on a Bowflex. Later, in San Francisco with his wife to board an Alaska-bound cruise ship, he observed swimmers preparing to swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco. It was a revelation.

"I told my wife, ‘You know what? With two years training I could probably do the swim.’ That’s where the idea came from."

Perez started using the cruise ship’s treadmill, then bought his own. He started swimming again, this time at the BISD aquatic center. Perez started riding a bike. He guessed it might take three to six months to get in shape, though it turned out his original estimate was correct: It took two years. Perez went from being able to swim 500 yards nonstop in June 2008 to 5,600 yards — more than three miles — the following summer. The swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco is only 1.5 miles. Perez, down to a svelte 205 pounds, was ready.

That’s 1.5 miles of cold, frequently choppy water and, of course, the possibility of sharks. Great white sharks actually have been observed by scientists in San Francisco Bay in recent years. But Perez was lucky: no sharks and relatively calm water.

The most thrilling moment was more than halfway through when Perez felt what he describes as "a dog whisker sniffing my foot."

He decided it wasn’t a shark. Sharks bump. Seaweed? A seal perhaps. Perez swam faster.

The strong ocean currents were another issue, which is where Perez’s coaching came in extremely handy. He learned that, to avoid being swept out into the Pacific Ocean, a swimmer has to swim in an easterly arc against the current for roughly half the distance so as not to completely miss the Aquatic Park, the entrance to which is only 50 feet wide.

"If you miss that opening you probably can’t beat the current to make it back into that opening," he says. "I overshot the buoy only by five yards, but to make back that five yards took a lot of effort."

Perez did make it back, though. Though he’d assumed it would take him an hour, Perez looked at his watch and realized he’d done it in 36 minutes. Back on shore, he celebrated with the biggest hamburger he could find, a couple of beers and a long night’s sleep.

Perez says he might not have followed through on the swim had he not announced his intentions to everyone he knew. He credits Linda for allowing him time off to train and for being generally supportive of the idea. Though supportive, she admits she was skeptical.

"Truthfully I didn’t think he would do it," Linda says.

It didn’t really matter. Her husband had turned into Superman.

"It got him in great shape," she says. "He dropped 40 to 50 pounds. He’s in better shape than he’s been since I’ve known him. If nothing else, that’s what I got out of it."

As elated as he felt upon completing the swim, Perez says it was nothing compared to what it took to prepare.

"Really the story is not so much about the swim," he says. "Maybe that was the goal, but the obstacle that I really wanted to overcome was obesity. Overcoming obstacles I do believe is what really defines us."