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Six Hillsborough deputies go through a rigorous selection process that leaves just one of them as the newest member of the dive team.
By ANGELA MOORE
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001
TAMPA -- The six deputies trying to save four victims are starting to panic. After swimming for 30 minutes, they're exhausted. They've dropped a couple of the victims and are screaming at each other.
"That's a 4-year-old girl that's drowning down there because you're too tired to help her," yells Deputy Ryan Balseiro, warm and dry on the side of the pool at Copeland Park on a recent afternoon.
The 4-year-old girl really is an 8-pound weight made from nylon and lead pellets. But Balseiro's challenge inspires a couple of the struggling swimmers to dive down after it. By the time all four weights are safely deposited on the side of the pool and the deputies are treading water again, they are thoroughly cowed by their poor performance.
It's not just pride at stake. It's a spot on the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office dive team, an opening that only comes available once every two or three years.
Balseiro, a 10-year veteran of the team, is there to motivate the hopefuls but also to mess with their heads a little bit. He tells the six men that should they make the team, they'll tread water with the weights for up to two hours, not 20 minutes.
"You never know when the marine unit's going to forget you in the bay half a day," Balseiro said. "Been there, done that."
The HCSO dive team consists of nine deputies. When retirements or transfers cause that number to dip below nine, they hold tryouts. That doesn't happen very often. And when it does, the tryouts are so strenuous that it takes most wanna-bes two or three attempts before they make the team.
Once a deputy makes it, he or she (only one female deputy ever has made the dive team) can look forward to being paged at 2 a.m. to dive blind into retention ponds, lakes, the Hillsborough River or Tampa Bay to retrieve bodies or try to save people. Dive team duties are in addition to, not in place of, the deputies' normal duties. All this for an extra $75 a month in their paycheck.
"Definitely, we don't do it for the money," said Sgt. Al Greco, the leader and most veteran member of the team.
Balseiro said that although spots on the team are coveted, it's not for everybody.
"Well, HCSO has 1,000 deputies, and six are here trying out," he said. "Folks who are trying are looking for a challenge. Our dives are not fun.
"These guys are asking to do what is statistically the most dangerous job in law enforcement," Balseiro said.
Still, during tryouts, the dive team members seemed almost like fraternity brothers, putting the pledges through the wringer to see who's left standing at the end.
"It is kind of like a fraternity," Balseiro said. "But it's earned."
It's that sense of camaraderie that kept Deputy Lou Cagnina going through two days of rappelling, oral and written tests, three hours of swimming and treading water and a complicated underwater obstacle course executed while blindfolded -- for a second time. Cagnina had tried out before.
"I know this group," Cagnina said. "They're a tight-knit unit. It'd be special to be a part of it."
This time, he made it. Sgt. Greco called Cagnina on Thursday morning to let him know he'd be working Saturday as the newest member of HCSO's dive team.