Heartbreak is not exclusive to family members who lose a loved one. For those charged with saving lives, losing a single one is an experience they carry forever.
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“Every kid is my kid,” said Donna Patton, an intensive care nurse who cared for 19-month-old Edna Mae McGovern in the final days of her little life.
Edna Mae spent a week in intensive care, following a fatal pool accident at her home in 2009.
“(She) had those blue eyes, blonde hair,” Donna recalled, thinking Edna Mae looked like her own daughter. “You take every single kid home with you, even if you don’t mean to,” she said. “Every kid gets a piece of my heart.”
Lieutenant Gio Serrano knows the feeling. He guards lives on Fort Lauderdale Beach.
“I do remember every single one of them,” he said.
Just last year, Fort Lauderdale Ocean Rescue counted 300 rescues and 66,000 preventative actions taken by lifeguards like him.
But there’s one case from more than 15 years ago that he’ll never forget – an 8-year-old boy pulled from the water.
“I can still see him clear as day,” he recalled. “I actually rode all the way to the hospital with the patient, worked him all the way there and heard the mom when she was told.”
The boy did not make it.
“For me it was the one that really broke me,” he said. “After two years of struggling with sleep and other issues because of it, I sought help, professional help, therapy.”
While watching over Edna Mae, Donna became close with the girl’s mother, Casey McGovern. Casey now runs a non-profit in her late daughter’s honor, known as Every Child A Swimmer. The organization provides underserved kids with scholarships for swimming lessons. But it doesn’t stop there.
“We’re trying to focus on… making sure that swim school gives 12-20 lessons per child,” she said, with the goal of making sure children reach a safe swimming skill level.
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So far this year, 82 children have drowned in Florida. 120 children drowned in all of 2025.
Casey takes that number personally. She and fellow moms in her organization are determined to stop it from rising.
“We’ve created the water safety ambassador program,” said Carrie Hazen, who is Casey’s sister and works in the organization with her.
They want to expand awareness by reaching out to classrooms across South Florida and driving home the message that swim lessons must be a priority over other extracurricular activities.
Donna often visits Edna Mae’s memorial tree at North Community Park in Coral Springs. It’s a Queen Crape Myrtle, with purple flowers that just bloomed for the first time this summer.
She spoke of the need for families to have “a water watcher, pool fences, pool alarms.”
“No one thinks it can happen to them, ’cause you never think it can happen to you, but tragedy strikes everyone, anyone,” she said.
She fought tears as she recalled parents crying over their children in hospital beds.
“You can’t unhear people begging for their kids back, unhear families begging for their child to wake up,” Donna said.
To learn what steps you can take right now to protect your child and others, visit everychildaswimmer.org.
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