Walt "Butch" Hendrick began teaching diving and rescue in 1960 in Puerto Rico, where he and his family performed many of the off-shore rescue, started an offshore water rescue team, and installed and ran the first and only civilian Hyperbaric Facility in the Carribean at the time. Walt's work in Puerto Rico was interrupted for a few years when he served in the U.S. Navy. Since that time Walt has devoted his life to teaching diving, rescue, recovery and diver safety to thousands of fire, police, EMS, military, and sport divers.

Walt Founded Lifeguard Systems to further these efforts. In the 1970’s he and the Lifeguard Systems staff trained FDNY Rescue Companies Dive Team for over a hundred hours per year for several years. Walt moved onto train many other departments including the U.S. Parks Dept., Washington DC FAA, Washington DC FD, South African Dive teams, and diver and teams in over 15 countries.

Walt became a prolific writer and started a diving column in Fire Engineering Magazine, and wrote for several other diving journals. He developed several three-projector slide shows and audiovisuals about public safety and sport diving rescue. Many of the slides and photos used in the shows and publications around the world.

By the 1980’s Lifeguard Systems had grown with more trainers and a larger teaching area, expanding in, and to, such countries as South Africa, Saudi Arabia, all over the Caribbean, the US, and Canada. Walt and his lead trainers became noted public speakers, authors, and award winners.  Andrea Zaferes joined the team in 1987 and became the second lead trainer, author, and program creator. 

Today

Lifeguard Systems in the 21st century has taken large leaps in many different areas. Public Safety divers and surface water rescue personnel can now take any of 25 different programs that are of the highest standard world-wide. Fire Engineering/Pennwell Publishing published Surface Ice Rescue, Public Safety Diving, and Ice Diving Operations. TeamLGS founded RIPTIDE, a nonprofit organization, devoted to homicidal drowning investigation and research, recovery operations, and public safety diver and water rescue technician accident prevention.

Besides the training of Headquarter instructors, they started teaching ten day Phase 1 Public Safety Diver Instructor Training Courses to certify those that were not able to do the long HQ internship programs. This ITC is the highest standards public safety diver instructor training course in the industry.

Our Instructors are certified dive instructors, members of dive teams, EMT’s, law enforcement and fire instructors, authors and public speakers. The 1996-7 Our World Underwater Scholar, Craig Nelson, worked with us full time for two years to help us write more books and teach more programs. Brian Nylander (IN), Bryan Duffer (MD), Ken Balfrey (NJ), David McCoy (NY), Orlando Abreus (FL), Joe Steyer (NY), Jeff Warrick (IN), David Holland (Toronto), and Dr. Cliff Turen (MD) joined the HQ teaching staff team.

Each year we:

• teach over 1,500 students comprising over 300 different public safety agencies
• publish over 20 articles
• speak at public safety and dive shows
• serve as expert legal witnesses for diving related problems
• assist with underwater recovery operations by phone and on actual sites.
• assist with Homicidal Drowning Investigations with our nonprofit organization RIPTIDE
• test and help design water rescue and recovery equipment
• manage the wateroperations on-line discussion group
• produce the RIPTIDE water operation E-zine
• write letters to help water operation teams convince decision makers to get them the standards, training and equipment they need
• are always ready to answer questions by phone about any water related topic - and if we don't know the answer, we help you find someone that will.

We have produced:

• six educational videos, one of which is ten hours long with a 700 page workbook.
• several books including, Scuba Instructor Readiness Series, Oxygen & the Scuba Diver, Field Neurological Guide & Workbook, Surface Ice Rescue, Public Safety Diving, Ice diving operations, and an extensive Public Safety Diving SOP.
• over 25 different rescue, recovery, and leadership level training programs