It's been five years since Tia Gambrel-Irizarry was caught in a rip current at Turner Beach on Captiva Island. Not a moment goes by without her thinking about what happened that day.
"I still forget very much, still suffer very severely... even five years later," she said.
While her memory is very clear about the day, she knows she was 700 yards away from shore, she was dead for 18 minutes.
"I was told I also woke up in the ambulance, ripped out my IV and they called the guy who jumped off the boat to save me," Gambrel-Irizarry said.
She was told not even the greatest swimmer in the world could've gotten out of that current.
"My rescuers told me even Michael Phelps couldn’t make it out of the water that day," she said.
This week, 17-year-old Issac Breese lost his life while swimming off Sanibel's Blind Pass Beach . He was missing for two days before the Sanibel Police Department recovered his body. Just a day later, the medical examiners confirmed his family's worst fears, that their son had lost his life.
"The same week, the same beach, and the same situation,"Gambrel-Irizarry said. "I can’t imagine what Isaac’s parent are going through. I want nothing more than to hug and hold his mother and apologize that it was him and not me."
Still taking one day at a time, Gambrel-Irizarry is now trying to raise awareness and wants swimmers to know the dangers of currents.
"If there’s anything I can do to educate anybody, it would be to tell you to learn all those types of currents and don’t go in the water," she said.
Because something needs to change.
"Expand the budget on Sanibel Island to put a lifeguard on Blind Pass and Turner Beach to keep the swimmers out of the water," she said.