74 • DECEMBER 2021
a message to try to get help finding
them, but nothing came of it. Strasser
and Pisano sometimes thought of
her, too, especially whenever anyone
asked, “What’s your craziest story
at sea?”. But neither Desireé nor the
men who saved her knew where they
could start looking.
“Desireé was a ghost,” Strasser
says. “We saved her, she’s out in the
world. And that’s all we knew.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic
derailed Philip Friedman’s plans
to return to his teaching job near
Shanghai, China, the 63-year-old
fishing aficionado decided to stick
around Southern California with
his family and make a podcast about
his hobby.
Friedman Adventures launched
in December 2020, featuring stories
from fishermen around the wharf
talking about boats, catches, and
fishing tips. On one episode Pisano
talked about the 1986 rescue.
That day, 41-year-old Pablo
Peña listened to the show on his
20- minute commute to work as a
railroad engineer. The incredible
story he heard on the air triggered
a memory. Peña remembered a
conversation he’d had years earlier
with a former coworker. She’d once
told him she’d lost her parents in
a boating accident and had been the
only survivor.
“I was like, well, it could be her,”
Peña says. “But he would have to say
her name was Desireé Rodriguez to
make this solid.”
Then Pisano said on the podcast,
“Her name was Desireé Rodriguez,
the girl we rescued,” adding
that there were many Desireé
Rodriguezes in Los Angeles.
Peña says “I thought, Wow,
this is just surreal.” He had met the
podcaster a decade earlier on
a fishing excursion, so he sent a photo:©carolyn^cole/^ shutterstockPodcaster
Friedman
(hugging
Desireé)
helped give this
incredible story
a new ending