There's a photo on the back jacket of Norman Ollestad's memoir, "Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival," that could make a parent weep.
In it, a man is surfing in the ocean. On his back in a canvas papoose is a baby, blond, happy, oblivious to the danger of a stray wave or sudden paternal miscalculation.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, July 24, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 67 words Type of Material: Correction
Norman Ollestad: A profile of author Norman Ollestad in the Calendar section June 12 said the rows of shacks and bungalows where Ollestad grew up at Topanga Beach were demolished when "the city exerted eminent domain and demolished the neighborhood." The land was in fact a part of unincorporated Los Angeles County; the houses were removed when the California State Parks reclaimed the property for public use.
The baby is Ollestad, and the man is his father, also named Norman, a one-time FBI agent turned lawyer who devoted himself to training his only son in extreme sports.
The younger Ollestad skied at 3, whipped down difficult black-diamond slopes at 4 and surfed mammoth tube waves in elementary school. No physical fear -- or mental fear -- was left unchallenged.
Good thing. When he was 11, Ollestad was flying to Big Bear with his dad and two others when their tiny Cessna crashed in the mountains, 8,500 feet up. Ollestad's father and the pilot died on impact. His father's girlfriend, Sandra, survived the accident, with a gash in the middle of her forehead and a dislocated arm.
Determined to stay alive, young Norman half-carried, half-prodded her down the mountain until she fell into an icy chute and tumbled thousands of feet to her death, leaving a bloody smear.
Afterward, he climbed the rest of way down an almost vertical stone gulch by his fingertips and later slalomed on his Vans sneakers using tree branches as poles.
"I was very focused. I was aware that I could be afraid, that I could be freaked, but it was just so third person," Ollestad recalls 30 years later. It was as if he were levitating over his own body, he says, as if he were watching the whole thing from outside.
"There we were," he remembers of himself and Sandra, "huddled under the wing of the plane." At some point instinct kicked in. "I moved around the mountain like an animal. It was wolfish."
Now 41, Ollestad is deceptively small, with the massive torso of a much larger man. He has penetrating blue eyes and a deep, commanding voice. He's having lunch at the Reel Inn on the Pacific Coast Highway, across the street from the Topanga beach where he grew up.
There used to be two rows of shacks and bungalows here, a community of hippies and surf nuts, until the city exerted eminent domain and demolished the neighborhood. A lifeguard station stands exactly where Ollestad used to live with his mom, a teacher, and her then-boozy, sometimes-cruel boyfriend.
