Chuck Carter is a retired Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer and Rescue Swimmer who used to “fly 300 miles offshore to jump into 30 foot seas to rescue someone he doesn’t know and might not even like!”
He had a rather inauspicious beginning to his life-saving career by driving his car through a building as a teen age kid back in Maine! After he got through paying for that, he decided to do something more constructive with his life so he joined the Coast Guard. Fast forward 26 years, Chuck ended up on active duty “saving lives and training life savers.”
As an Aviation Survival Technician, Chief Petty Officer, Chuck figured that getting paid to work out and swim around was a great way to earn a living. When he found out in basic training that “they’re going to try to drown you” he realized he was in “over his head!”
But he quickly learned to not only survive but thrive in a career that he found extremely rewarding but where sometimes his buddies would find themselves alone, in the water 300 miles offshore, waiting to be rescued themselves!
If you’re a visual kind of guy or gal, you’re going to love the way Chuck articulates his story and paints the picture of a very exciting adventure of what it was like to prepare for his career of jumping out of a helicopter into 30 foot seas and living to jump and swim another day.
Chuck spent most of his time in Coast Guard aviation, performing countless missions as the Rescue Swimmer on Sikorsky HH-3 and HH-60 helicopters, Aerospatiale HH-65 helicopters and as a load-master and drop-master on the Lockheed C-130.
During his last nine years on Active Duty, Chuck managed the Coast Guard’s Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) School at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma, CA where he trained more Coast Guard EMT’s than anyone else before or since!
During this time, Chuck also worked a second job at the local Emergency Room in Petaluma as an Emergency Room Technician to keep his own operational EMT skills sharp; this is a guy you definitely want with you if you’re thinking of doing anything stupid!
Stick around to the end of our interview to find out how God put Chuck in the exact position needed to take his life saving skills from physical to spiritual!!
He recently began a Master’s Program in Counseling Psychology at Dominican College in San Rafael, CA. Chuck has six children with his wife of 33 years.