His tousled hair is still blonde and he looks like a younger version of himself.
He’s a professional beach boy, no matter his age.
Greg Wilfert is 71 years old and has been lifeguarding over half a century, watching out for swimmer safety since he was 17 years old.
Wilfert is the Scarborough Beach lifeguard who was attacked by a great white shark over the weekend while swimming on shark patrol.
“It was frightening,” he later told WGME-TV’s Brad Rogers. “I’m not gonna deny that.”
Wilfert is in his 54th consecutive year guarding the same stretch of beach he first fell in love with as a teenager.
“When I came down and saw the beach and, I guess, what do you call it, your first love? There it is. I found a way to make it work,” Wilfert told told WMTW-TV in an interview five years ago.
Wilfert carved out his summers for lifeguarding even as he worked as a physical education teacher and later ran an antique business with his wife, who died seven years ago.
He’s rescued more than a thousand swimmers in his decades with his eyes on the ocean, a demanding job with no room for error.
Wilfert was swimming on weekend shark patrol when a shark grabbed the strap of his rescue torpedo and pulled him down.
“I was pulled under about five feet and I thought I was caught in the propeller of a boat, because that’s the only thing I could think of,” he recalled, “until I realized there was no boat.”
That’s when Wilfert figured out it was a shark, at least a dozen of which have been spotted at Scarborough Beach in the last few days.
“And all I did was pull off the strap and get to the surface and swim as fast as I could to get in,” he said.
When Wilfert got to shore he ordered the immediate closure of the beach.
He said the lifeguards send drones overhead over every half hour looking for sharks and if they spot one “we send out the jet ski because the sharks don’t like the jet skis.”
