Arizona swim instructor aims to help others after witnessing drowning

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - "I witnessed a drowning when I was 10, and it affected me," said Tracy Richards. "I saw the mom's face afterwards, and I vowed that I would never see that again. I was 10, and I vowed at that point I would never watch another child drown."

At 15, Tracy started teaching swim lessons. Today, she is a swim instructor at the Village in Gainey Ranch.

"I mean, you hear about the near drownings and people say, ‘oh, but they survived.’ Sometimes, that's not the quality of life that anyone would like," she said.

Statistics from the Children's Safety Zone show that from Jan. 1 to May 11, 2024, 18 deaths resulted from 43 water-related incidents. That includes seven children up to the age of 5.

"I mean I think every parent's worse fear is you walk outside, and your kid is in the pool, and you didn't see it – whether they're still trying to kick or God forbid, there is a drowning because especially in Arizona, you hear about it so much," Taylor Bellow said. "We have so many pools."

Taylor Bellow didn't want to take any chances with her 2-year-old son, Brexton. He started lessons a few months ago.

"My parents live very close to us. We are over there all the time, and they do not have a pool fence, so we opted to make sure that, even though he is not really interested in the pool before we started swim, there's just always that maybe, so we wanted him to learn to maybe flip over, float and get to the side," said Bellow.

Group swim lessons vary in size, anywhere from two to five kids. Richards starts her lessons at 9-months-old because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says children ages 1-4 have the highest drowning rate.

"It's a process for everyone, but they all learn to get to the wall. They learn to roll and float on their back," she said. "All those things not necessarily in the same order, but learning those things is important because most kids don't fall into the middle of a pool, they fall by the side, so if you teach them to roll over and get to the side right away, it's a good thing."

Richards runs a number of different programs that teach children the importance of water safety, including mommy and me classes and a unique swim and read program, where she uses phonics and familiar words for the fun of swimming.

All these years after witnessing that drowning, Richards is even more passionate about saving lives because she says drowning is 100% preventable.

"It's OK for them to be uncomfortable to learn the process because crying during the process is a lot better than never crying again," she said.