Olympic hero Gary Hall Jr survived a shark attack and hurricanes... then came a terrifying escape from LA fires

Gary Hall Jr is praying to find a puddle. It’s the best he can hope for, a week after the retired swimmer glanced up at the hills above Pacific Palisades and spotted a plume of smoke. An alert pinged on his phone around 10 minutes later. There was a fire, and evacuations were underway, the message read. It was a bit late.

Hall had already watched a ‘wall’ of flames tumble towards his house. He had already grabbed his dog and dodged the falling embers to reach his car. He had already begun to drive through the ‘apocalypse’ engulfing Los Angeles.

'People were pulling up on the sidewalks, trying to drive around other cars, blowing through stop signs and red lights. It was terror, absolute terror in the faces. Desperation,' he says.

‘The black smoke was so thick that they couldn't even see the mirrors on the side of their car.’ Other people fled on foot. ‘They didn't know if they were running toward or away from the flames.' Those flames razed his home and stole almost all he had worked for.

He had only three minutes to escape – time enough to grab a painting of his grandfather, a gift from his daughter, and his pooch.

But the 50-year-old was forced to flee before he could grab the 10 Olympic medals he won between 1996 and 2004. He has vowed to head back to Pacific Palisades armed with a shovel and the spirit of the 49ers.

‘I may find a melted puddle of Olympic medals - gold, silver, and bronze,’ Hall says. But he isn’t holding out much hope. ‘I don't think there's any chance.’

Neighbors have snuck into see the devastation; Hall has shared a clip of where he once lived and taught swimming. It's now a pile of rubble and bent pipes and burned out belongings. ‘They’re saying there is nothing,’ he says. ‘It's like a puddle of black.’ And the damage is not done.

The fires have already claimed at 25 lives but Los Angeles is still burning. It’s one of the most destructive natural disasters the area has ever seen. For Hall, it is the latest trauma of a life that has veered between the extraordinary and scarcely believable. 

As a young man, he overcame type 1 diabetes to win five gold medals and become one of the pool’s most charismatic figures.

In 2006, he wrestled and punched and kicked a blacktip reef shark after it had bitten his younger sister. They only escaped after she shot it with a spear. A decade later, his cousin - a Navy SEAL - was killed by ISIS fighters in Iraq. Hall has been injured in a couple of car wrecks and survived countless hurricanes, too. ‘I'm questioning God's intentions at this point,’ he says.

'When you have a near-death experience... it definitely has an impact on your outlook on life, its fragility and its meaning,' Hall continues. 'What is the worth of our life and our things?' 

A week after fleeing his house, the 50-year-old is living with his sister a couple of hours south of Los Angeles. He has taken a few baby steps back towards normal life- ‘my first purchase was a toothbrush,’ Hall says. ‘About two days later, deodorant.’ He now has more underwear and socks, too.

He has been cancelling utilities payments and completing FEMA applications; a GoFundMe page, set up by his sister, has raised more than $80,000. But what comes next for his life and his coaching business Sea Monkeys Swimming? ‘Just so many questions,’ says Hall.

He is still trying to process this latest layer of trauma. There are certain things he can’t explain: ‘It's going to be some time before I'm able to articulate how awe-inspiring this wildfire was,’ he says. 

There is countless more he won’t ever replace. The IOC has offered 10 more Olympic medals but he won’t find another 1962 Volkswagen Kombi, his first car that carried him on road trips up the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. ‘It was part of my identity,’ he says. It was visible in that video. ‘Crushed, melted,’ Hall says. ‘Heartbreaking.’

Hall collected a souvenir whenever swimming took him somewhere new. Artwork, antiques, furniture. ‘Every single piece in my house… had a story to it. A history.’ Such as the leather Chesterfield couch - one of his children, Gigi, had scribbled her name in a hidden corner. ‘I can get a new Chesterfield,’ Hall says, his voice beginning to quiver. ‘But it won't be that one with my daughter's signature on it.’

The 50-year-old is speaking from the front seat of a car and, at one point, he briefly drops off the call. There is grim irony in the reason why: his cell phone had begun to overheat.

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Within a minute, that plume of smoke had doubled in size. Within another 60 seconds, the wind had sent flames ‘charging’ down the hill. ‘I immediately called my girlfriend (Lara Pezza),’ he says. ‘The fire department will put it out,’ Hall told her. He was wrong. 

Moments later, Hall was scrambling to collect belongings from near the door. The first thing he grabbed? The portrait. ‘I loved my grandfather more than anyone,’ Hall says. He scooped up the religious artifact - given to him by his daughter - his dog Puddles, some dog food and some insulin.

‘The next stop would have been a small safe in my closet in the bedroom that had the medals, a collection of nice watches (and) jewelry.’ But time ran out. He drove down to the Pacific Palisades village and realized many people were 'oblivious' to what was unfolding. 

‘Some people were looking at it and filming,’ he says. ‘Kids playing in the park with their nannies. And then, once the wall of fire came over the hill… everybody was running for their lives. It was chaos.’

Before long? 'People trapped in their cars on Sunset (Boulevard) had fire on both sides of them,’ Hall says. ‘You can imagine the desperation of a parent when their kids at school, five blocks away.' His girlfriend's home was destroyed, too.

‘She couldn't see the car in front of her,’ Hall says. What was visible? ‘Women running, clutching their children, breathing in this black smoke, just screaming.’ The fire was now blocking both main roads out of town. 

‘Cars were trapped and there was nowhere to go.’ Luckily, Hall knew a back route and his partner escaped. ‘Every other car on Sunset burned.’

Hall’s sister had the foresight to book him a hotel room - before everyone else had the same idea. Checking in was 'grim,’ as locals arrived carrying their belongings, their pets and a ‘wild-eyed’ look from what they had witnessed.

‘Many of them knew that their homes were gone,’ he says. ‘The despair was so real.' As evening closed in, the streets of Santa Monica became busier and busier. Many people slept in their cars. All while a black cloud ‘just hung’ overhead. ‘It's not like the night,’ Hall says. ‘It's something much darker.’

He only popped out to pick up a toothbrush and an emergency prescription. Without needles for his insulin, he couldn’t eat.

A week on, Hall is still struggling to sleep. The flashbacks, the nightmares. Yet more trauma. Nearly two decades have passed since that spearfishing trip off the Florida Keys when a six-foot shark took a chunk out of his sister’s arm. 

Hall was forced to kick it and punch it in the nose; Bebe shot it as it charged towards her, open-mouthed.

The retired swimmer regularly flirted with tragedy while living in Florida during hurricane season, when ‘my entire house is shaking, I'm afraid that the roof is going to be ripped off, trees are flying through my car.’ All those experiences – the Olympics, the sharks, the car wrecks, the hurricanes - carry lessons.

‘Comfort in chaos,’ Hall says. ‘Everything slows down and you feel very alive… there's something darkly appealing or attractive about it.’

Unfortunately, that won't pay for a new home. Hall is among those who lost State Farm fire insurance last year.

'When you need them most, they'll deny and deny and deny... they make extremely difficult times more difficult,' he says. 'Everybody knows it's going to be a disaster.'

Thankfully, support has come from elsewhere. From close friends and people he hasn’t seen for 20 years. They have offered clothes, a place to stay, and 10 new medals.

'They're a nice souvenir from some swimming races a long time ago, in some regards,' Hall says. But? 'To me, (they) represent resilience... how we respond, and if we can triumph and persevere through countless setbacks and tribulations, this is what life is all about.'

Hall is determined to answer every single message of support. He isn’t the only one in need of help.

‘The average age of clients at Sea Monkeys Swimming is two to six years old, he says. ‘Watching a five-year-old try to comprehend that their entire life - as they knew it - is gone’ he says. ‘What are God's intentions with this one? To be determined, I think.’