But this is not you. This is Nathan Gocke.
A quiver of surfboards line the walls of Gocke’s Oxnard apartment. Gocke, 34, moves about the apartment in his wheelchair, casting his eyes casually across the surfboards.
“Those are from a past life,” he says.
A life that changed shape March 29, 2008. It was a great morning in the surf, 3- to 5-foot barrels at the 33rd Street break in Hermosa Beach. Gocke wanted one more wave before heading in to go to work. So Gocke took off on a left and pulled in. His front foot slipped, the board wedged between his legs, flipping him upside down in shallow water, and instantly drove his head to the sand. There was a “twang” in his neck.
“I’m laying there, floating face-down, trying to move my fingers and toes, but there was nothing there,” recalls Gocke. “I could kind of move my arms, and I was kind of flopping them around. So I was just holding my breath and hoping.”
The waves began tossing him around, going face up, then face down, back and forth.
“I’m thinking, ‘Okay, this is it. I’m going to drown and this is my life,’ ” remembers Gocke. “Or I am going to be living paralyzed.”
Gocke’s friend, Brendan Simmons, saw what happened and made his way to Gocke in the surf. Simmons slid his board beneath Gocke and pulled him to the beach. The lifeguard tower was empty, but Simmons was able to radio in for help. The paramedics came and rushed Gocke to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.
His C-6 vertebra, the front part of the vertebra impacting the spinal cord, was shattered. Surgery was successful, but Gocke no longer had feeling from his chest down. He was now a quadriplegic.
Yet what haunted him the most was the thought of never surfing again.
“One of the biggest things on my
mind after it happened was ‘great, what’s life worth now? I can’t surf,’ ” he
says.
Gocke never could have imagined that two years later he would be the subject
and star of a surfing documentary being shown in festivals all over the world,
even being considered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for
best short documentary.
In 1996, amateur surf star Jesse Billauer suffered a similar spinal cord injury while surfing in Malibu and became a quadriplegic. But the injury motivated Billauer to get back into the ocean and continue surfing. In the process, he established the nonprofit organization Life Rolls On (LRO), dedicated to raising awareness about spinal cord injury and using action sports as a platform for healing.
“When I was in ICU somebody brought in a picture of Jesse (Billauer),” recalls Gocke. “He was on a wave in Fiji, a big left, and that was what did it for me. It sparked my memory.”
Prior to the accident, Gocke worked in television broadcasting for FOX network. Lying in the intensive care unit, he remembered actually broadcasting a show featuring Billauer and Life Rolls On. It was about Billauer getting back into surfing as a quadriplegic.
“Then I said, ‘OK, I can do this. Life is worth something again. I’m going for it. Just to get there again, back on the waves,’ ” says Gocke.
Filmmaker Richard Yelland got news of Gocke’s accident through LRO. Yelland, who is also the founder of Life Rolls On’s flagship recovery program They Will Surf Again, was documenting individuals with spinal cord injuries and how surfing has changed their lives. So along with Yelland, Billauer approached Gocke and his family about documenting his recovery all the way to catching his first wave, and the Gockes gave their immediate support.
“The first day we saw him, it was apparent to everybody there that this is one of those life-changing experiences you are able to witness,” says Yelland. “And Nathan, on that very first day of filming, when he couldn’t even eat, but just hook onto a cup and sip out of a straw, he was this uplifting, upbeat guy who saw the possibilities for him progressing — an attitude that said ‘everyday I will get a little better, and that gives me hope.’ ”
For the next two years, Yelland and his film crew visited Gocke, capturing key moments in his recovery. The crew documented his rehabilitation from weight training to feeding himself, to transitional living as he worked his way back to the ocean.
For Gocke, the most difficult part was learning to use and strengthen his new body, a body that is numb from the armpits down.
“Literally, I’m just a head and shoulders balancing on a torso,” says Gocke.
But with nearly full range in his shoulders and neck, Gocke began a grueling schedule of weight training, working as hard as he could with what he had, knowing he wasn’t going to be in a rehab facility forever. He knew the real world was out there, and it would be far different than the way he left it.
After graduating from Royal High School in Simi Valley in 1994, Gocke gave it a go in the “real world” and moved to the Los Angeles area. He picked up a job in a local grocery, combating the doldrums of life with skateboarding and fast cars.
“I was kind of a wannabe race car driver at the time, racing reckless in the streets,” recalls Gocke.
By 1999, Gocke felt he was drifting along without purpose and sought to give his life more meaning. So he cashed in his monotonous grocery routine for a ticket to Hawaii. With his savings, Gocke lived off the grid in a remote jungle.
No electricity, no address. He fished for his food, walked the land and picked his own fruits and vegetables.
“It was really easy living,” recalls Gocke.
After six months, Gocke knew the vacation was over and it was time to get re-established in the working class. He returned to the mainland and back to the daily grind. He soon got a job in TV broadcasting for FOX, while settling in to a new life in Redondo Beach.
In 2001, Gocke’s mother, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. The loss of his mother brought him to the beach, seeking “peacefulness and a way out” of an otherworldly time. Even in Hawaii, Gocke had never sought the ocean as a refuge or an escape. He had also never tried surfing.
“There was something missing in my life now, and I wanted to get active again. It was calling me. I wanted to surf,” says Gocke. From that day on, Gocke never missed a swell and it felt like he had been surfing his whole life.
For the next seven years, Gocke eased into adulthood, passing his free time in the ocean and delving deeper into racing sports cars. (He eventually bought a Lotus sports car, which still sits covered in his driveway.)
And such was Gocke’s life. He surfed. He drove sports cars. He hung out with friends. He worked.
And just months after the accident that threatened to strip Gocke of everything he once had, Yelland sought him out to film a young man’s quest to get it all back.
“They did a phenomenal job,” says Gocke. “When I watched it, I couldn’t believe it was me.”
The film is called Floating: The Nathan Gocke Story. A key component to the film was Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock, the star and creator of the Academy Award-nominated docudrama Super Size Me, is also on the board of directors for LRO. When he heard about Yelland’s film, he signed on as the executive producer.
“With documentaries, you never know what path you’re going down,” says Spurlock. “I applaud people like Nathan that are so brave to put themselves out there and be stripped bare in front of a camera to share their story and the journey they’re on. Ultimately, in the end, because of that bravery, there is something really magical that comes out of this movie. It is so powerful, moving and inspiring. It represents every reason why I want to make movies.”
The film was released in selected theaters April 16-22 and premiered on Fuel TV June 23. It has become a part of Fuel’s regular lineup and still continues to air, with a DVD release forthcoming. It’s now making its run in the national and international film festival circuit.
“The amazing thing with projects like this is, amazing things happen,” says Yelland.
For Gocke, the amazing is surfing again. Friends help him into his wetsuit, put a life vest on him and carry him to the water. They place him on his surfboard and paddle him out into the lineup. He lies prone on his elbows, and when a set comes, his friends place him in position and push him into a wave.
“Then I just lean right or left, but the best thing is now a 3- or 4-foot wave is triple overhead,” says Gocke, laughing. “I still go for barrels.”
Surfing is the easy part for Gocke. But what he struggles with is the burden he feels he places on others.
“The guilt that you feel for people having to take care of you is horrible,” admits Gocke. “I have a hard time asking for help because I feel like I’m intruding.”
But Gocke is adapting. He is driving again. Though he still hopes to one day drive his Lotus, he currently drives a customized Honda Element, often cruising PCH to check out the surf.
He still battles personal issues about being paralyzed, but the accident never stripped him of his charm. Ramona Paolim was visiting her cousin in the Casa Colina Rehabilitation Center in Pomona while Gocke was there rehabbing.
She was introduced to Gocke, and the two have been dating since.
“He’s always been so positive. That
is what’s attractive about him,” says Paolim. “The paralysis is never an
excuse.”
Paolim says that lately, Gocke has been drawn to the beach much more and
surfing whenever possible.
When the waves are flat, Gocke says, he spends a lot of time daydreaming. He dreams of ways to modify his Lotus so he can speed through the streets again. He dreams of surfing the giants on a modified hydrofoil surfboard. His new goal is being towed into a wave at Cortes Banks, a break about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, with waves measuring up to 70-feet.
And also in the downtime, he often wonders, “Why?”
“I’ve had a long time to think about it,” says Gocke. “It really seems like there is no reason why. Once something does happen, you can find a reason for it. You can look at it both ways. The chicken or the egg? Let’s say you get into a position where you can help somebody. People after me who get injured, I’m in a position where I can help them.
You can say the reason this happened to me is so I can help them. But does that really make sense ultimately?
Because I could not help them and just fade away and die, and there would be no reason. I guess you make your reason. You choose to lead by example, evolve and make humanity a better thing.”
shane@vcreporter.com To chat with Shane or Nathan visit www.disaboomlive.com
