Randy Haba's story began on a small farm in Southern Nebraska includes Coast Guard service

Randy Haba’s story began on a small farm, run by his father, Dean, just outside of Glenvil, with his family. The family relocated to Colorado in 1982 when Randy was three. He was the youngest of his four siblings, Joe, Julia and Rene. Trying to keep up with his older brother, Joe, and farm work through the years made Randy a bit of an athlete. In high school, he played several sports, helping his football and basketball teams win state championships. However, he had never been much of a swimmer, having been land-locked most of his life.

After graduating high school in 1997, Randy attended Western State College of Colorado in pursuit of their SAR (search and rescue) program. Unable to continue paying the substantial tuition, he dropped out at the end of his freshman year. Shortly after, he relocated to Kingston, Tennessee, to join his brother Joe, working construction. One of the construction workers said he had once been a part of the US Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Program. Randy went to the nearest recruitment center and scored high on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test. Despite having never even been to the ocean, he enlisted with the intention of becoming a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescue swimmer.

Following eight weeks of bootcamp in Cape May, New Jersey, Randy was assigned to the 378-foot Coast Guard High Endurance Cutter Midget (WHEC-726) where he served for a year-and-a-half during which there was a six month deployment to the Persian Gulf where the Midget was attached to the Navy’s U.S.S. Constellation Battle Group. By 1999, Randy Haba was now Airman Haba. He was transferred to Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans for a preparation program for A School. During these few months of training, AN Haba was able to graduate from doggy paddling to almost breaking the A School 200-yard gear swim record.

Less than half of those who enter into Aviation Survival Technician (AST) School or “A School” are not able to complete the program. The Aviation Technical Training Center (ATTC) located in Elizabeth City, North Carolina has a multi-million dollar facility with a 50 by 25-meter pool with two 15-foot towers to act as helicopters for deployments. Furthermore, the facility is equipped with special environment controls that can produce “complete darkness, thunder, lightning, 70-knot gale-force winds, fan driven water to simulate driving rain and helicopter rotor wash and highly turbulent waters from a wave generator.”

One of the first tests required of an A School student is a non compliant survivor Test where. non compliant survivors are exhausted, irrational and panicked trying to drown you. Instructors play this part to perfection, frequently climbing on top of students trying to drown them and often ripping off their face-masks and snorkels. Should a student fail to get their “victim” under control and lifted via rescue sling to a tower in 20 minutes or less, they are subsequently released from the program.

By the end of the 18-week long course, a student must be able to effectively run five types of rescue equipment, seven methods to approach a survivor and seven different methods of survivor recovery. They must be able to “disentangle two downed aviators beneath ballooned canopies in the water, save a distressed vessel from sinking by utilizing a deployable dewatering pump and be capable of rescuing as many as six non compliant survivors.”

In October of 2000, he became one of the few to graduate and was advanced to Aviation Survival Technician 3rd Class (AST3). For the next four-and-a-half years, stationed in New Orleans, he flew on more than 150 search and rescue missions. On one mission, he dropped onto a boat to rescue an injured fisherman and then remained aboard the vessel for nearly 15 hours until the storm had passed, earning him an air medal.

Haba made rank and was advanced to AST2 class. In 2012, AST2 Haba and his wife of three years, Rebekah, an avionics electrical technician third class (AET3) were stationed in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. By this time, Haba was instructing at A School.

Hurricane Sandy was still hundreds of miles off the coast at 3 a.m., Oct. 29, when the base’s alarm system woke Haba.

“I woke up right away. I knew it wasn’t going to be good because… well because it was a hurricane,” Haba would later tell Newsweek. “You don’t get these often. Most people are smart enough to stay away. Smart enough not to go out on the water.”

The Bounty, a newly remodeled replica of the HMS Bounty (1787) of the Royal Navy had just been relaunched from Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Fearing that Hurricane Sandy, now unofficially title “Superstorm Sandy” due to it’s record breaking damage inflicted in areas where it had made landfall, would destroy the ship while it was anchored in port, Captain Robin Wallbridge decided to chart a course for St. Petersburg, Florida. In an area sailors call The Graveyard of the Atlantic, the ship was sucked into the storm where she and her crew were greeted by massive, 30-foot waves.

The Bounty’s water pumps and engines were failing, yet Captain Wallbridge refused to contact the Coast Guard. It was actually Chief Mate John Svedsen who was able to get a call through. The information was recorded by Tracie Simonin, office manager, who passed the message along. Only then, did Captain Wallbridge finally send out an email to advise that “his ship was taking on water and they would probably need assistance in the morning.”

By the time AST2 Haba and the rest of the Lieutenant Commander Cerveny’s crew arrived, the Bounty was capsized and darkness was absolute. With no light to judge the horizon, 30-foot waves came without any warning. The crew spotted a survivor grasping a flashing strobe light amongst parts of the ship. As Haba was lowered from the helicopter, he was battered, smashed, lifted up by waves and then violently dropped back to the end of his cable. A later x-ray would show he sustained a compressed vertebrae and had several hairline fractures in his lumbar spine. He was able to get through the parts of the ship, get a hold of the survivor who turned out to be Chief Mate John Svedson and get him up to the helicopter.

Daylight was just beginning to break. The wind was so strong that it was tearing the white foam off the tops of the waves making it look like a snow storm. Another strobe was spotted but the crew arrived to find only an empty immersion suit. A life raft was floating about a mile from what was left of the Bounty. Haba jumped from the craft to swim about 40 feet to the raft, however he found this to be a Herculean effort as the waves were being pushed in one direction while the warm, Gulf Stream current was flowing the opposite direction. The experience was described as “like being in a washing machine on ‘agitate.’”

He was able to make it to the raft, where inside, he found seven traumatized crew members.

“How’s everyone doing,” he asked. They stared at him blankly.

Haba made several trips, each more daunting than the last because of the storm’s growing intensity, rescuing four of the crew when he was informed that the helicopter needed to return for fuel immediately. Though he requested to stay behind with the remaining three crewmen, another crew had already arrived on the scene to assist. AST3 Daniel Todd, who was one of the top performers instructed by Haba, poked his head into the raft saying “Hi, I’m Dan. Heard you guys need a ride.”

Between the two swimmers and crews, they were able to save 14 men and women that day. This earned Haba and Todd Distinguished Flying Crosses for their actions. After receiving several more awards and performing many more dangerous rescues, Haba was granted the AST1 class and later, Chief Aviation Survival Technician (ASTC) ranks.

For the last few years, ASTC Randy Haba, LT Rebekah Haba and their two daughters have been in Mobile, Alabama, where Randy is the chief of the helicopter rescue swimmer standardization team, overseeing the training requirements of the entire Coast Guard Swimmer fleet.

In 2024, Haba will retire after 25 years of service.