On June 9, 2013, 2-year-old Kyan Quintana was in the pool with his siblings at their Tamiami home, happily answering their questions about what he wants for his upcoming birthday party, just two weeks away.
But in an instant, everything changed.
“In a second, he didn’t respond to a question,” said JC Quintana, Kyan’s father. “And all of a sudden, they turned around and he was floating behind the two older kids. It happened in seconds.”
Despite efforts to revive him by his mother, Trudy Cedeno, and paramedics, Kyan passed away.
“We just couldn’t cope,” said Quintana. “We were just numb.”
According to Stop Drowning Now, drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1-4 in the United States, with 80% of child drownings happening in residential pools when an adult is present.
The Quintana family wanted to ensure an accident like this wouldn’t happen to another family and to keep their son’s memory alive.
“We immediately felt he had to have a legacy,” said Quintana . “We felt this guilt that he was so young. No one really got to know him. No one was going to remember him.”
Two weeks after Kyan’s death, there was no cake or birthday balloons.
Instead, Kyan’s Kause Swimming Foundation was launched in his name to raise money for enrolling children in formal swimming lessons.
“Our goal was to put kids in the water,” said Quintana. “We wanted kids to be safe in the water. We wanted kids to be comfortable in the water. We wanted kids to see the warning signs.”
Since its launch, through fundraising and donations, the foundation has been able to provide 2,000 children with swimming lessons every year, from birth to 8th grade.
But their fight didn’t end there.
“We’ve advocated,” said Quintana. “We’ve been to Marco Rubio in Washington. We’ve been to multiple school districts and multiple commissioners throughout Florida, trying to see how the politics work to instill and mandate swimming lessons in Florida.”
And last fall, the program they advocated for began its pilot.
In collaboration with The Children’s Trust, Miami-Dade County is gearing up its efforts to prevent tragedies like Kyan’s.
Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 through 9 in the area, but studies show that participation in formal swim lessons can reduce that risk by 88%.
The newly launched Zero-Drowning Miami-Dade initiative aims to teach kindergarten children essential water safety lessons to protect them in and around the water.
“A lot of times, their parents are busy, and they’re not able to take the child to the pools for lessons,” said James O’Connor, chief of the Office of Drowning Prevention at Miami-Dade County. “This provides free lessons and free transportation. So also, if there’s some reason that the parent doesn’t have the economic means to provide lessons to their child, this is offered at no cost.”
For 10 consecutive school days, children ride school buses to a nearby pre-selected swimming pool, where they have 30-minute swimming lessons.
“It entails life-saving skills, you know, such as jumping in the water, being able to turn, swimming back to the side, and returning to a position of safety,” said O’Connor. “And we start the program with a water safety lesson. So, we’re teaching them how to be safer in and around the water as part of the education program.”
Rockway Elementary was one of the schools chosen for the pilot program, and for mother Tania Godoy, seeing her 6-year-old daughter, Emma, participate in her first swimming lesson excited her.
“I think it’s very important that she knows how to swim, and I’m confident that she knows the basics,” said Godoy.
The goal is to operate a long-term program, coordinating lessons for thousands of children yearly to save lives.
“Our goal next year is 10,000 students,” said O’Connor. “When we’re fully operational, we aim to reach 20,000 children.”
And they are not the only program focused on preventing child drownings.
This year the Miami-Dade County Public School program Learn to Swim, or iSwim, celebrated its 50th anniversary teaching kids lifesaving water skills.
iSwim targets schools in areas with high drowning rates.
“We look at the data from the different zip codes within Miami-Dade County,” said Bobby Williams, a curriculum support specialist for physical education. “It’s a sad day when you’re looking at how the students pass away. These certain zip codes had the highest rate of drownings for students. So that’s how they’re picked.”
North Twin Lakes Elementary School has been hosting the program since 2018, and for Principal Jose Fernandez, teaching children drowning-prevention skills is as essential as reading and math.
“I’m terrified of water. I get in the water now to this day, and I’m still scared. I don’t know how to swim,” said Fernandez. “I thought it was important to be able to offer a skill, a life essential skill, that I have not been able to master.”
iSwim teaches lifesaving skills to pre-K, kindergarten, and first-grade students over two weeks with 10 classes in total, each lasting an hour.
While the program doesn’t teach children to swim, it focuses on essential skills like floating, back gliding, kicking, rhythmic breathing and using a life jacket.
“It’s really an important skill to have in life, especially living in Florida, to live around bodies of water,” said parent Nicole Wallace. “So, to have that as a free opportunity, of course, why would you not take it.”
For the Quintana family, programs like this stress the importance of drowning prevention because all it takes is a second for a tragedy to happen.
“I wish there was more of an understanding or sense of urgency I didn’t have,” Quintana said. “I knew I had to be in the pool with them. I had to, but it’ll never happen to me. I was on the swim team. I was a lifeguard. I teach my kids to swim. It happened to me.”
