Illegal swimming in Philly's creeks often leads to tragedy

IT'S BEEN ALMOST 17 years since the raging waters of Pennypack Creek swept away Nicky Simonetti, 15, as he fought the current trying to save his best friend's life.

But his mom, Beth Simonetti-Gallelli, still shudders at the memory of the day in 1996 when she lost her oldest child - along with his childhood friend, Chris Busse, who was like another son to her.

"It was one thunderstorm the night before. One violent storm. It woke me. And the next day, it was a picture-perfect, gorgeous summer day for July," she told the Daily News. "It was like 86 degrees. It was gorgeous."

The pain never goes away, she said, and the July 1 drowning of 13-year-old Brandon Boyle near the spot where Nicky died renewed her fury that so many lives could be lost in a seemingly innocuous place.

The memories of her bright-eyed teenage son, the oldest of three, haunt her. He had just finished his freshman year at Father Judge High School.

"I just turned 20 when I had him, so we kind of grew up together. I still feel to this day, God bless him, that he was my soul mate. When they put him on my chest, I knew I wouldn't have him forever," Simonetti-Gallelli said, referring to the day her son was born. "So I watched him like a hawk . . . and then that one day, like I said, a bright sunny day, boom. Who would think?"

As the anniversary of Nicky's death looms, she said no mother should ever have to experience the anguish of losing a child.

But almost every summer, the life of another child - or, in rare cases, an adult - is claimed by the deceptively beautiful waters of Pennypack or another of Philadelphia's seven creeks.

Though it's illegal to take a dip in city creeks, in the last two decades, according to a count by the Daily News, at least 16 people - mostly kids younger than 16 - have drowned in them. Dozens more have been injured in the winding, rocky, debris-filled waters. Since 2010, police have rescued 19 swimmers in trouble from creeks and rivers.

"I just wish that people would heed the warnings, for Christ's sake," Simonetti-Gallelli said. "No mother should have to bury her child. They have to get it."

On a warm Saturday in June, Becki Salmon and Matt Werner ventured to the banks of the Wissahickon Creek to have engagement photos taken.

One minute Salmon, 30, a paramedic, was posing with Werner, 33, an EMT, in front of the scenic greenery surrounding the creek near Valley Green. The next, she was diving into the creek to save a young boy's life.

The boy, who the couple estimated was about 4, was swimming with other kids before he began struggling.

"When I turned to look, he was underwater. His face was under. He was bobbling to get to the surface," Salmon recounted. "So you knew that it wasn't OK, that the boy was in trouble."

With that, she plunged into the creek in her black sundress, scooping the lucky boy into her arms and bringing him back to the safety of the banks.

Though city officials warn that swimming in creeks is illegal and risky, requests for official statistics on drownings of swimmers made by the Daily News to several city departments yielded little result. Officials said drownings in creeks and rivers are not tallied, and determining how many have occurred in recent years would require sifting through all cases in which drowning was ruled as the cause of death.

"This is something that is a little bit deceptive, because you get this sense, there's no official report, so you feel like this must be safe," said Maura McCarthy, executive director of Friends of the Wissahickon, adding that she's heard countless anecdotes of people getting hurt jumping into Devil's Pool, a popular swimming hole at Wissahickon Creek.

"How can we better track this sort of information, then how can we use that to better inform the public so that they can better understand the dangers of the activities?" she asked.

Police Marine Unit Lt. Andrew Napoli, who's been in the unit nine years, said creek rescues are tricky, because locations that lure swimmers are hard for rescuers to access and even harder for 9-1-1 callers to pinpoint.

"When you have people call it in, for instance, like with the little boy who drowned [July 1], the initial location wasn't a good location, so you had police and fire trying to find the right location," he said. "When we eventually did find the location, even getting to it is difficult at best, because basically, you're driving along bike paths."

The time it takes to even start a rescue, he said, means that swimmers who begin to drown have little chance of survival.

"It's a long shot that they're going to be rescued, unfortunately," he said. "The reality is, a drowning victim only has minutes to survive, especially in warmer water."

Despite the allure of creeks and the popularity of swimming spots like Pennypack and Devil's Pool, city officials say the bottom line is that swimming is against the law and unsafe. Attempts at enforcing the law, though, have proven futile.

"It's like whack-a-mole. You solve a problem here, and it pops up there," said Mark Focht, first deputy commissioner for Parks and Recreation. "We had a challenge recently where police did go into Devil's Pool and move people out, then we found four or five other places in the Wissahickon where people go just to swim."

Focht estimated that about half the city's 10,300 acres of parkland is close to a creek or stream, and said anywhere there's a bridge or a dam tends to draw swimmers.

Depths vary widely in the city's creeks - from less than a foot to an average of about 6 feet - and can change on a whim with rainfall. What is a fairly still spot in a creek one day can transform into a churning whirlpool the next with a dose of heavy rain.

"It always scares me when I see kids jumping off bridges or dams, because there can only be a foot of water there [at times]," Focht said. "It's all very dangerous."

He encouraged people to take advantage of the city's 70 public swimming pools. "We have more outdoor swimming pools than any other city in the country," he said. "Want to cool off? Go to our swimming pools."

Focht said park rangers can write tickets for swimmers and other lawbreakers in the parks, but that the 22 year-round and eight seasonal rangers tasked with patrolling 5,500 acres of parks along the Wissahickon and Pennypack creeks and by the Schuylkill are spread thin.

"We don't have enough rangers to cover all of our areas," he said. "They can't be everywhere."

On a sun-soaked afternoon last week, two daring young men catapulted off rock cliffs at least three stories high around Devil's Pool into the pond below - which park stewards say is only about 10 feet deep.

After scaling the treacherous rocks leading up to the precipice and somersaulting into the pond, Trevor Broom, 27, took a break along the water's edge.

Broom, of Roxborough, said he knows swimming there is illegal.

But he's done it every summer - sometimes daily - for the last four years.

"Sometimes the cops will come down here when there's, like, a couple hundred people," Broom said, adding that he hasn't gotten in trouble beyond a verbal warning for swimming.

He also said he hasn't seen anyone get hurt jumping into Devil's Pool - not even the guy he knows who jumps off a bridge about 50 feet above.

Broom's friend, James Vegas, 27, who bartends for a living and lives in Ambler, said he narrowly avoided injury jumping that day.

"You know where I jumped from the top, up there?" Vegas asked, pointing to the jagged rocks above. "I didn't quite make it to the water. I landed on the rocks beforehand. But I was fine, I just stood right back up. I had a couple scratches on my leg."

According to McCarthy, Vegas got lucky. She said she's seen jumpers break limbs at the swimming hole, and that a member of her group once saw a man land the wrong way and wind up paralyzed from the neck down.

Back in Fox Chase, Simonetti-Gallelli sat at her dining room table poring over old photos of the handsome, blue-eyed son she lost decades too soon.

She lamented repeated drownings and the city's seeming helplessness to put an end to the problem, and suggested that permanent plaques in memory of her son and other victims be placed by the creeks as a solemn reminder of the dangers they pose.

"How about you try a little harder?" she asked of the city. "How about you think about two detectives coming up to your door [to say your child is dead]?"

She also had a word for parents with the mentality that swimming in creeks is something everyone does as a city kid.

"There are still parents to this day who say, 'Oh, it's a rite of passage for a teenager,' " she said wryly. "You know what's not a rite of passage? Dying."