A New Jersey police chief on vacation in Florida found himself performing CPR on a struggling 11-year-old girl after spotting her in distress in the Gulf waters off Holmes Beach on July 25. Riverdale Police Chief Charles Quant was off duty and on personal time when he saw the girl struggling in the water near the 3900 block of Gulf Drive, and he helped pull her safely to shore before beginning chest compressions.
West Manatee Fire Rescue crews were dispatched to the scene at approximately 7:38 a.m., according to Rodney Kwiatkowski, who spoke with the Anna Maria Island Sun about the emergency call. The call was upgraded to a cardiac/respiratory arrest response, and the girl's reported condition prompted an advanced life support effort from arriving crews, as detailed by DailyVoice, which first reported on the rescue.
By the time firefighters and EMS personnel arrived and began advanced life support efforts, Quant had already gotten the girl breathing again. Holmes Beach Police Chief William Tokajer said the girl began breathing on her own and expelled swallowed water before emergency medical services arrived, crediting Quant's quick action in the moments after the near-drowning.
A Commendation From a Fellow Chief
Tokajer put his praise in writing, stating that Quant's life-saving intervention exemplifies the highest standards of public service. He also confirmed that the rescue occurred while Quant was off duty and on personal time, underscoring that the New Jersey chief acted purely as a bystander rather than in any official capacity.
Quant leads a 17-officer department serving roughly 4,500 residents across Riverdale's two square miles in Morris County, New Jersey, according to background compiled by PoliceApp. Municipal records from the Borough of Riverdale show Quant was still serving as a police lieutenant as recently as May 2023 before his promotion to chief, a rise the borough council oversees as part of its management of police personnel appointments.
Airlifted to a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center
The girl was taken to Birdie Tebbetts Field in Holmes Beach, a former municipal airstrip established in 1946 that closed to fixed-wing aircraft in 1974 and now serves as local parkland and a designated helicopter landing site for medical emergencies. From there, she was airlifted to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, a 259-bed facility operating a designated Level I Pediatric Trauma Center that U.S. News & World Report ranked as Florida's top children's hospital for 2024–2025.
The 7:38 a.m. emergency call came well before the start of daily lifeguard coverage at nearby Manatee Public Beach, where summer lifeguard duty doesn't begin until 9 a.m. and runs to 7 p.m. Manatee Public Beach and Coquina Beach are the only two Manatee County beaches with professional lifeguard stations, leaving stretches of shoreline like the one near Gulf Drive unpatrolled during early morning hours.
A Pattern of Bystander Rescues Along the Shoreline
This is not the first time a bystander has intervened in a Holmes Beach water emergency. In September 2023, an alert bystander pulled a drowning 9-year-old child to safety before emergency responders could arrive, reflecting how off-tower water rescues in the area often depend on quick 911 dispatch to route first responders. Local officials have also flagged the risks along this coastline more broadly: in June 2026, Manatee County Public Safety officials urged beachgoers to use heightened caution along Anna Maria Island after lifeguards handled dozens of water emergencies over a three-day span tied to intense rip currents.
The incident also fits into a wider public health pattern. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death for children between 5 and 14, trailing only motor vehicle crashes, with more than 4,000 unintentional drowning deaths recorded nationwide each year. Safety network data cited alongside CDC figures indicate that for every child under 18 who dies from drowning, seven others receive emergency department care for non-fatal drownings, with nearly 40 percent of those visits requiring hospitalization or specialized transport.
Tokajer, who has led the Holmes Beach Police Department's 17-officer force since April 2013 after prior command roles in Bradenton and Longboat Key, was the one who formally recognized Quant's actions. His commendation gave Riverdale's small New Jersey department an unexpected moment of recognition far from home, rooted in a chief's instinct to act the moment he saw a child struggling in the surf.
