Russell Gehweiler Jr. and his girlfriend, Tracey Keelen, are both lifeguards and rescued dozens of people from the floodwaters of Hurricane Sandy.

(Photo by Ed Murray/The Star-Ledger)

Russ Gehweiler Jr. wears a black hoodie and a camouflage, flat-brim cap pulled down low, almost to the top of his eyebrows. He keeps his hair long and sports a mustache that gives him the look of a late ’70s TV villain. He answers to “J” — short for Junior — drives a mud-caked Jeep, and rarely leaves home without his two Labrador retrievers.

He’s what you’d call a man’s man, for sure. But J’s about to step out of character and tell a couple of love stories that will help to explain how the events of Oct. 30 — the day after Hurricane Sandy — unfolded in the Shore Acres section of Brick Township.

Two heartfelt yarns that will illuminate how he and girlfriend Tracey Keelen helped 40 to 50 people evacuate the flood-ravaged neighborhood the day after the hurricane.

The first tale dates back five years to the Toms River 7-Mile Open Water Row, the annual rowboat race from the Toms River Yacht Club to the Seaside Bridge and back. It’s the story of how Gehweiler and Keelen — a couple of Jersey Shore lifeguards — met.

LIFEGUARD HEROES

Russ Gehweiler Jr.

Age: 30

Town: Toms River

Profession: Lifeguard, boat repairman, handyman

Fun fact: Transports and relocates boats up and down the East Coast.

Act of heroism: Helped rescue 40 to 50 people from Shore Acres section of Brick

Tracey Keelen

Age: 27

Town: Toms River

Profession: Personal trainer/health and fitness specialist

Fun fact: Was a swimmer at Montclair State University

Act of heroism: Helped rescue 40 to 50 people from Shore Acres section of Brick



"We were unloading boats before the race," Gehweiler, 30, recalls. "And this blond girl jumps in and helps me unload my boat, and I was, like, ‘Alright.’ Then I competed against her and I asked my rowing partner, ‘Who’s the chick?’ I was impressed."

Keelen, 27, who swam competitively at Toms River High School North and Montclair State, was not as blown away.

"At the bar after the race, he was asking for my number and I said, ‘No.’ But then he said, ‘I’ll take you for a row at Island Beach State Park,’” Keelen says. “And I said, ‘If we really are going for a row, then I’ll give you my number.’ The next morning, about 8 a.m., my phone rings and he’s on the line asking, ‘How about that row?’”

Says Gehweiler: “I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

The second story goes back seven years to Salty T’s bar in Monmouth Beach. Gehweiler, who grew up splitting time between his mother’s home in Rumson and his dad’s place in Brick, overhears one of the patrons talking about his plans to restore and sell a 1976 Van Duyne rescue boat, the classic lifeguard boat seen along the Jersey Shore. Gehweiler offers to buy the boat “as is” but is refused. A week later, J shows up with $500 cash, waits for the boat owner to consume just enough alcohol, and completes the transaction.

“She needed work,” Gehwiler recalls. “But she was a beauty. I worked on her and kept her at my father’s house so I could go for a row in the bay whenever I wanted.”

Gehweiler and Keelen have both been lifeguards for more than a decade — Gehweiler at Island Beach State Park and Seacrest Beach in Lavallette, Keelen at Silver Beach and Normandy Beach. Each estimates to have made more than 100 ocean rescues in their careers as guards, but said many of those have come during off hours.

Hurricane Sandy aftermath in Ocean County 17 Gallery: Hurricane Sandy aftermath in Ocean County

“After a hurricane hit North Carolina one time we had nine-foot waves at Island Beach State Park and a fisherman got pulled out in his waders,” Gehweiler says. “I just happened to be running down the beach with my lab, doing a run-swim-run workout. A park ranger picked me up in his truck, got me there. The fisherman was saying a ‘Hail Mary’ and I was like, ‘Not today, brother!’ It’s just what lifeguards are trained to do.”

Keelen so desperately wanted to become a guard that she tried to fib her way into the program at Silver Beach a year early, at the age of 15. “I didn’t get away with it,” she says. “But I was there the next summer. It was always my dream job.”

After graduating Montclair State, she held several corporate positions, including working for Verizon for a couple of years, but missed being a lifeguard so badly that she insisted future jobs would keep the summers open. She is now an independent personal trainer/health and fitness specialist — and lifeguard.

“It’s really like it gets in your blood,” Keelen says. “The intense training, the understanding of responsibility, it’s not easy to walk away from once you’ve done it.”

And so, as they watched Sandy’s fury from the window of their apartment in Toms River, Gehweiler and Keelen started thinking of what role they might play in the aftermath. Immediately, they knew they would have to check on J’s father, Russ Gehweiler Sr., a veteran boat captain who lived by himself in a two-story house on Farragut Drive, on a lagoon off the Barnegat Bay, who had decided to ride out the storm from his home.

That Tuesday morning, they packed wetsuits and towels into the Jeep, and drove to Brick. When they reached Drum Point Road and began to head east toward Shore Acres, they soon realized they were about to enter a scene unlike anything they had ever witnessed. The water was waist deep, even a mile or so from J’s father’s house. They began to walk. When J came upon a stray surfboard, he grabbed it and began to paddle. On his way back toward his father’s house, neighbors shouted to him.

“I’ll come back for you,” J shouted. “After I get to my dad.”

Richie Brennan, a neighbor and a retired Teaneck policeman, saw J paddling and recalled, “It was the first time I felt like I’d get out of here. I was in Vietnam and had a long career as a police officer, but that’s as scared as I’ve ever been.”

But what Gehweiler saw as he neared his father's house is what made him feel safe. The bow of the Van Duyne, peaking out above the 4-foot-high water. He paddled over, pulled out the knife he'd packed, and began to cut the rope that held the boat to the trailer. When the blade sliced through the rope and the 350-pound fiberglass boat popped to the surface,

Gehweiler let out a primal scream, heard by the entire neighborhood.

"The boat sprang to the surface like a cork," Gehweiler says. "I hopped in and started to bail out the water, and she was ready to go. I was like, 'Now it's gonna get good.'"

Keelen had stayed behind with the Jeep at first, but after an hour of shuttling people to safety, Gehweiler asked someone, "Have you seen my girlfriend?"

“And a guy asks, ‘The blonde?” Gehweiler said. “And I turned around and there she is helping get people out of the water. At that point, she got in the boat with me and we started working together. It was chaotic, but we just knew to trust our training.”

They started doing laps around the neighborhood in the Van Duyne, at one point noticing a family, a mother and father, a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old and a dog.

"They were also trying to carry luggage," Keelen says. "They were exhausted, soaking wet.

We had grabbed a canoe along the way, so we grabbed their luggage and threw it in the canoe. J lifted the 5-year-old. I lifted the 3-year-old. They were cold. But we got them out to the road. And we just kept on going, getting as many as we could."

Exactly a week later, as Gehweiler and Keelen walked the very streets they rowed through following Sandy, grateful neighbors were still offering thanks.

“My heroes,” said Janice Wood, who lives across the street from J’s father. “Before, we were just ‘Hello’ neighbors, but now we’re much more. What they did was unbelievable.”

JERSEY'S HURRICANE HEROES

Blind man helps neighbors | Deadly accurate forecaster

Doc saves patient in dark | Double lifeguard rescue

Football coach | Hero soldier | Kitchen never closes

Mom leads people to gas | Nurse makes special delivery

Rescue captain | Team effort in Sayreville

A trusting businessman | Woman rescues memories



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