Adam Cannizzaro: When are you coming out to New York?
Izzy Paskowitz: This year we are doing a really tight trip. We arrive in New York on September 8th and our camp in Belmar, NJ is on the 9th. Then we're in Long Beach, NY on the 12th, Montauk on the 14th and we depart on the 15th.

Adam: Who is coming out with you this year?
Izzy: The guys that are coming are mostly from Hawaii. From the Froiseth family we have Wally Froiseth’s grandson Nalu, Seth McElroy, Jimmy Gamboa – who is a pro longboarder from Malibu, my brothers Adam, Jonathan and Joshua Paskowitz. Joshua Tracy of the great Tubesteak Tracy Family from Malibu, Jennifer Tracy, Nick Hernandez, Tommy Witt - another professional longboarder who is going to be on the cover of the next issue of The Surfer’s Journal - and many others. We’re very fortunate that we have these guys who are so down to go. They’re really excited about what we do. A lot of them have been here before. We got a couple of new guys: Che Pilaggo, Puna Moller, and Eddie Aikau’s nephew Zane Aikau. They’re all very capable of doing these camps.

Adam: How do you select the people who surf with the kids?
Izzy: The process starts by selecting guys who have a tremendous amount of experience, with years and years of surfing under their belt. It’s important to be really prepared, and to have enough guys in the water to make sure the kids get a great experience with the most incredible guys in the world that can do this. It’s really such a select group of pro and semi-pro surfers. These guys are great watermen who deep inside are really not afraid of dealing with the autism aspect as well as tandem surfing with the children.

Adam: That’s cool that your brothers are helping out.
Izzy: You know when you have an autistic child it so changes your perspective. You don’t live the life you used to live, and a lot of the time I don’t really see eye to eye with my brothers. So this year it was kind of like a negotiation with my family, because my father’s documentary was showing at the Toronto Film Festival. So my balance was if I went to that, I can get my bothers Jonathan, Adam and Joshua to do Surfers Healing.

Adam: It sounds like it’s a real family affair.
Izzy: Absolutely, Absolutely. Just the reactions are incredible. Some of the first time guys are just blown away by what it’s all about. I used to compete with some of these guys in the past and they had no idea. They heard that I had an autistic son, but they got a dose of exactly what it’s like, and they came away completely changed.

Adam: Really? In what way?
Izzy: Well it was tough. We travel with my son, because I think it is the most important thing to have him with us. Isaiah is sixteen now, and he’s still a big guy. He’s 255 lbs, 6’1” and he still has limited language, and occasional behavior problems. He had a really big incident on the airplane making a connection in Atlanta, so it was like the ultimate nightmare for a parent. Plus I wasn’t there which compounded the problem. Not being able to, you know, touch him, knowing that all this was going on. The Flight Attendants were trying to restrain him, but the Hawaiian guys, you know, they wouldn’t let that happen. They kind of just made people move, and they surrounded him and took care of him. But it’s just another day in the life of what we deal with, especially if we want to try to be as close to normal and be like other families that want to travel with their children. Something like that for an Autistic family is impossible - it is a very, very difficult thing to do.

Adam: The thought of getting on an airplane and the whole process is something…I think I’d rather just drive everywhere.
Izzy: I know but I feel like we’re getting it done, but we’re also educating a lot of people. All three hundred people on that flight knew exactly what Autism was all about. You just always have to live with things that are so unnatural, disturbing, and also just so surprising. There are things you just never get used to, but the show has to go on.

Adam: Isaiah was the catalyst for Surfers Healing?
Izzy: It was on a fluke really, just destiny that I ran a surf camp, and that all my instructors grew up with Isaiah and knew his behavior. When it came time to take him in the water and getting on my tandem board with me, he was a good boy in the water. It felt like he was a little calmer. Especially with early onset of Autism, he was very anxious and he didn’t sleep very well. He’d be up for days without sleep. When I had him in the water for an extended period of time he began to take naps. So it was definitely a physical response to something that was really substantial.

Then I got a parent of an autistic child who was interested. With the prevalence of Autism, one parent finds out and that’s all it takes to get the ball rolling, and desperate young families are like “Well I want to do it too!”

So we had a couple of other kids down and I took one other boy who came down every Wednesday. Looking back now, that was eleven years ago. He still enjoys it today. He is completely non-verbal, but this is something that he can do. You know, the thought of doing something, a sport activity with your autistic child, you often hear “He can’t do that.” But this is something they can do, whether they like it or not.

Adam: It must’ve been such a release for you when you discovered that you could bond with your child through Surfing.
Izzy: Yeah, especially in my field, and with my father’s background. He was such a pioneer in surfing in the very early 30's, and I had a great run as professional longboarder. I thought my life was going to be so different and I thought Isaiah, my first boy, was going to be a surfer just like me. When those hopes are dashed, it takes a long time to deal with the reality of letting go of the hopes and dreams about what your son can do.

I fought with that for a long, long time. I don’t think that I really accepted Isaiah for who he was until he was thirteen.

Now, that’s who he is, a very unique child, and I think he kind of knows what these Surfers Healing events are all about. How they touch so many families, and children and extended families. There have been thousands, tens of thousands of families who have been down at that beach, experiencing something that they never thought possible. From a situation that was so hopeless, it gives a ray of hope and they walk away saying “What else can my son or daughter do?”

Adam: What is the cost to enroll a child in a Camp?
Izzy: The camps are free. The kids are fed, we hang out, and we can be normal for a day. There’s nothing a child can do that will be inappropriate on that day.

Adam: How are the parents?
Izzy: When we first got going you could see the trepidation and the uncertainty in the parents eyes. I’ll never forget Augie, who had three autistic children. Augie worked on the Tarmac at JFK, and he said to me (imitating a NY accent) “Youse, eh, youse gonna take my kids out, out there surfin?!?” I looked right at him and said “Augie it’ll be OK, I will take care of your children with my life.” And at the end of the day he was glowing and saying “Oh my God, my boys surfed!”

I guess it’s part of my motivation that I got to do it for the families and the parents. Especially the young parents who come with the 3 to 5 year olds, who are so desperate and don’t know where to go or who to turn to. I was there too, with Isaiah, you know. We turned our bank accounts upside down to give him alternative therapies.

You know some were wacky, some were – whatever – but the bottom line was he was still autistic, and my wife and I wanted to just start something that was free. Something that, you know, nobody would have to pay for it out of pocket.

Adam: How long have you been coming to NY?
Izzy: My friend Tim McCabe was the driving force in getting me over there, and on September 11, 2002 we took eight kids out in Rockaway.

Adam: Tim was a Rockaway surfer?
Izzy: No, he had nothing to do with surfing at all. We met at an Esquire Magazine event for a "Brothers" Issue. We were the Paskowitz brothers, all eight of us out of California, and they were the twelve McCabe brothers all out of the Bronx. He has such a charismatic family. They were these hardcore New Yorkers. One was a political advisor, another a detective, one was a union guy. We really just connected, and by the end of the evening you knew there was something special.

You know when I first started this, I’d take each of these children out all by myself. I’d go out surfing with them and then I’d go home and cry my head off. My wife has much thicker skin and it doesn’t really - you know she’s dealt with a lot. I have way too thin skin and I almost need to do this because I feel it’s a daily reality check that you know, that things aren’t perfect. That things aren’t, you know, normal in my life.

But I needed that confidence, somebody to give me that ‘OK’ that, you know, that this is not that wacky. That this is something that is working and that people are going to accept it. Up until that time what I was doing was so personal and so close to my heart. Tim really just gave me the confidence to come over and bring Surfers Healing to New York.

In fact, I attribute Tim for getting the first Long Beach, NY event off the ground. He made it to the last event and then he passed away. All he ever did was talk about Surfers Healing. You know, he lived for what we did, and this year we are dedicating this event and future Long Beach events in his memory.

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