Meet Your Instructor

Our Family's Story

Hello!  I'm Stephanie and am privileged to serve as one of your local ISR instructors for Santa Rosa and the surrounding Sonoma County area.  I'm excited to get to know you and your child and help them become safe, confident little swimmers.  

I grew up in San Jose, CA and have lived in California most of my life.  Growing up, I was always around water.  My parents had a pool, and we would often vacation at Pine Mountain Lake in the summer time or go boating and tubing on Don Pedro reservoir.  Water safety has always been important to me, even more so once I had my own children.

I became aware of ISR after my own daughter had a nonfatal-drowning accident when she was three and a half years old.  Prior to her accident, she had been taking private swim lessons locally twice a week for about eight months at our local swim organization.  We did not realize at the time that those lessons were geared towards fun and water acclimation, not survival.  They used floatation devices and played games to help get her comfortable in the water, and taught her how to blow bubbles and to rely on goggles.  It wasn't until after her accident that I realized how ineffective these lessons were.

They gave my daughter a false sense of security in the water.  They didn't teach her how to survive if she were to fall in.  

Prior to her accident, I thought I had done everything right in terms of water safety.  She knew to never go in the water without an adult.  We had been taking swimming lessons for the better part of a year.  We had fences, self-latching gates, and locking hot tub covers.  She always had her floaties on.  However, we found out that drowning is silent, even with adults less than ten feet away.  It can happen in just a few minutes.  

My husband and father were able to pull my daughter out of the water, and I was able to start CPR.  Those three minutes of CPR were the longest of my life, but I was successful in reviving my daughter.  I was told by paramedics, police, firefighters, and ER doctors that if she were in the water fifteen or twenty seconds longer, she could have had irreversible brain damage or worse.  We were incredibly lucky.

I never want another parent to experience the fear that we did, or the grief that so many parents have had to endure due to the injury or loss of a child due to drowning.  

Fast forward to now, my son and daughter love the water and are voracious swimmers. ISR gave them (and myself) the framework to begin building safe water habits as their skills and curiosity grew.

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I look forward to working with you and your family on your water-safety journey!