{"id":475515,"date":"2026-09-25T17:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T17:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475515\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T17:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T17:24:09","slug":"long-beach-lifeguard-ed-segura-marks-50-years-on-patrol-herald-community-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475515\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach lifeguard Ed Segura marks 50 Years on patrol | Herald Community Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the season changes in Long Beach, most residents\u2019 attention turns away from the beach to cooler-weather pursuits. But for Ed Segura, who recently celebrated 50 years with the city Lifeguard Patrol<\/a>, the sand has been his second home for most of his life.<\/p>\n

Segura, 67, grew up in and on the water. On summer days, his family parked their boats on Short Beach Island, in the West End of Jones Beach State Park. One day when he was 14 or so, he and three cousins swam a couple of hundred yards to an ice cream stand near the park\u2019s Coast Guard station. When they returned, Ed\u2019s father, longtime Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Donald J. Segura, granted him a longtime wish.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just passed your swim test,\u201d Ed recalls his father saying. \u201cWhen I get out of the firehouse this week, we\u2019ll go buy you a surfboard.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years later, when he was in 10th grade, Segura caught the attention of Woody Davis, the Long Beach High School<\/a> swimming coach, during a swimming class in the school pool. Two years after that, as a senior in 1977, Segura broke two meet records in the Nassau Invitational Swimming Championships, in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle.<\/p>\n

In 1976 he joined the Lifeguard Patrol\u2019s Central Crew, which covered eight beaches, from Long Beach Road to Lindell Boulevard. He has worked on the beach every year since, and has been a lieutenant for the past 14 years.<\/p>\n

Segura earned a degree in business administration from Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, in 1981, worked for a few years at MetLife and then spent 25 years at what is now Federated Hermes, the investment management company, as a sales rep and vice president \u2014 all the while working on the beach on summer weekends.<\/p>\n

In 1998 he met Henry Cutler, a Merrick native who had moved to Long Beach in 1979 and was a lifeguard as well. Cutler, who\u2019s now 76, said the two have remained friends ever since, in part thanks to their shared interest in the stock market.<\/p>\n

Cutler said they often referred to their patrol as the \u201cOld Man Beach,\u201d because it was staffed mostly by older guards. He recalled a 17-year-old member of the crew who would listen in on their conversations about finances.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis dad was an accountant,\u201d Cutler said. \u201cI can only imagine dinner conversations where the father is going. \u2018Where are you getting this stuff?\u2019 I pity a 16- or 17-year-old kid, but that\u2019s what we were talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Cutler doesn\u2019t work the beach anymore, he and Segura regularly make time to roam the boardwalk and catch up, often chatting about finances and their perspectives on life.<\/p>\n

\u201cEd is one of the most responsible, knowledgeable lifeguards I\u2019ve had the pleasure of working with,\u201d Cutler said. \u201cHis knowledge of the ocean and beach conditions is unsurpassed, and really taught me a lot when we were working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Segura retired from Federated Hermes in 2009 and, at age 50, began lifeguarding full-time during the summer. As a lieutenant, he has shifted his focus to teaching younger guards \u2014 about life both on and off the sand.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom knowing their responsibilities on the beach patrol, to doing well in school and making smart decisions,\u201d Segura said. \u201cI just try to share wisdom with these young men and women, to help them avoid drama in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the years have gone by, he said, he has seen many changes. Long gone are the summers when guards slathered on baby oil to produce the darkest tan possible. And unlike the early days of Segura\u2019s career, there\u2019s now widespread use of vehicles to patrol the beach and audio communications among the patrol\u2019s crews. Most recently, the lifeguards received two 2025 Yamaha WaveRunners and two Nissan Frontier 4×4 pickup trucks, equipment that was unimaginable in the 1970s and \u201980s, thanks to funding approved at a January City Council meeting.<\/p>\n

Mike Lundwall, captain of the East Crew and Segura\u2019s superior officer on the beach from 2017 to 2022, described him as his right-hand man, who was always trying to \u201cmake a better day for a young guard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe may be Central Crew lieutenant, but he bleeds purple,\u201d Segura said \u2014 East Crew\u2019s color.<\/p>\n

In the offseason, you\u2019ll find Segura working at the Long Beach Recreation Center<\/a> on Magnolia Boulevard. But next summer, and for as many future summers as he can handle the job, he\u2019ll continue to work the beach \u2014 because, he said simply, \u201cIt\u2019s the best job in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the season changes in Long Beach, most residents\u2019 attention turns away from the beach to cooler-weather pursuits.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[186879,186877,131,133,145941,174345,186878,132],"class_list":["post-475515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-central-crew","tag-ed-segura","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-history","tag-long-beach-lifeguard","tag-long-beach-lifeguard-patrol","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}