Zuma Beach

This guide to Zuma Beach in Los Angeles follows a county lifeguard named Bob Burnside, who patrolled this stretch of sand from the early 1950s through decades of punishing rip currents that turned rescues into a race against seconds. In 1967 he started tinkering at home after his shifts, chasing an idea to replace a rescue device whose design had barely changed since the First World War. Those same rip currents, strong enough that off-duty guards once compared them to river rapids, still run beneath the lifeguard towers here today.