[mistercow]

>She displayed the TV-portrayed signs of drowning after jumping off the diving board with no idea how to swim. Probably due to the adrenaline rush, the rescue is a bit fuzzy, but that's where the lifeguard training kicks in.

My guess is that the reason was that she was not drowning yet. She probably would have if you hadn't saved her, but in her case she had a few pre-drowning moments in which to react. The difference would be that she consciously knew that she was screwed as soon as she was in the water, since she didn't know how to swim.

[gmrple]

Yes, something most people don't know about drowning is that it is typically defined as the point at which breathing is interrupted and the person is mostly motionless, usually perpendicular to the surface of the water. Sometimes before beginning to drown a person will become a distressed swimmer, which is what people think of as stereotypical drowning behavior. People in this stage often need rescuing, but they are not drowning. The trick is that while people often go from distressed to drowning, people that are drowning may never go through the distressed stage.