Braxton Rocha describes his recovery from a Sept. 20 attack by a 13-foot tiger shark “miraculous.”
“Everything’s going really well,” the 27-year-old Kapaau man told the Tribune-Herald on Friday. “My cuts are pretty much healed up now; I got all my staples out of my leg and I don’t really have to wear my brace anymore. I’m starting to regain almost full strength in my leg.”
Rocha, who’s out of the hospital, won’t need follow-up surgery and soon will start physical therapy. In fact, he admits to being “pretty antsy already to jump into the water.” Rocha then added a caveat: “But after the shark attack, I’m not going to jump into the water if it’s murky. No sense putting yourself at risk.”
The water was murky on the fateful Sunday when he and a friend, Shannon Pasco, went spearfishing off Upolu Point in North Kohala.
“I just jumped in trying to get some food for dinner for my family,” he said. Instead, he encountered the largest tiger shark he’d ever seen, which he earlier described as “jaws wide open, right in front of my face.”
Braxton punched the shark in the nose and swam ashore, where Pasco applied a tourniquet to the wounded limb and helped Rocha into the bed of a pickup truck to be driven to the hospital.
Rocha then did something that guaranteed instant celebrity. He made a cellphone selfie video that included graphic footage of his leg injury. Fighting through the pain, he said, “Just got attacked by a tiger shark! Hoo! Going to the hospital!”
“I just wanted to let my parents know what was happening but nobody was answering the phone at my parents’ (house) and my phone was about to die, so I did the video and threw it on Facebook,” he said. “I figured that would be the quickest way to let my whole family know what happened.”
The video has since been removed, but not before it went viral.
“I can’t believe how it just blew up,” Rocha said.
It’s a 30-plus-mile drive from Upolu to North Hawaii Community Hospital. An ambulance met the truck at the 21-mile marker of Akoni Pule Highway and transported Rocha to Kamehameha Park in Kapaau. From there, a county helicopter flew him to the Waimea hospital.
The trip was one Rocha wasn’t sure he’d survive.
“When I came out of the water and I saw how severe the attack was, I was trying to cope with the fact I don’t know if I’m going to make it, already,” he said.
Rocha is impressed by and grateful to his surgeon, Dr. Howard Wong, and the hospital staff.
“I couldn’t have asked for better care,” he said. “When I took off my bandages, I couldn’t believe how good my leg looked.”
His own quick thinking under pressure also put Rocha in the best position for recovery, as the shark relinquished the leg after he punched the beast in the nose.
“The doctor said if it had damaged my bone in any way, they’d have had to amputate. But it went right to the bone and didn’t hit the bone,” he said.
Asked about the calls, messages of support and hospital visitors he had in the days and weeks that followed, he replied, “I couldn’t really put a number on it, thousands.”
That includes a multitude of calls from media outlets worldwide, which he described as “swarming and burning up” his mother Laurie’s phone.
As a byproduct of the media attention, Rocha now is recognized in public.
“Random strangers, when I go to the grocery store or just cruising someplace, they’ll see me and … go, ‘You’re the person I saw on TV; you’re famous. Can I get a picture with you?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a picture with you,’” he said.
Rocha also was contacted by McKenzie Clark, a Kona woman who was surfing with a friend in murky waters near Halaula Lighthouse in North Kohala last Halloween when she was attacked by a large tiger shark. Clark’s friend, Brian Wargo, pummeled the fish and Clark escaped with injuries to her left hand and two fingers.
“She sent her prayers and blessings to me and said it’s a pretty crazy story, what I’ve been going through. And when I’m recovered, I’m going to meet up with her and her friend,” Rocha said.
Rocha, who worked construction and carpentry jobs, didn’t have medical insurance, and a GoFundMe online fundraiser was set up to help defray his medical expenses. It’s since been closed, Rocha said, and he’s obtained insurance.
Rocha also gained a new nickname. His social media pages now list him as “Braxton SharkBoy Rocha.”
“A bunch of my friends started calling me ‘Shark Boy,’ so I thought I’d just change my Facebook and Instagram name, make it easy on everybody,” he said, laughing.
In addition, there’s a renewed appreciation of life’s experiences, both miraculous and mundane.
“I’ve always believed in God,” he said. Pausing, he added, “How can you not believe in God when you go through something so crazy and make it out all right? Life in general, you just take it day by day and enjoy every moment that you’re blessed with, because you never know when your time is up.”
