Surfing Is the Tide That Binds

How many people can say they were on a reality TV show and won? And that they surfed in Mexico, South America and China, as well as Hawaii and Southern California? And did all of it by age 21?

Erika Cook can. And, like so many others on Father's Day weekend, she thanked her dad, Steven.

“My dad’s the best,” she said. “He’s super open-minded and backs me 100 percent.”

Steven Cook, whose credits include teaching at Ocean View in Laguna Woods and founding the Chinese Cultural Center program at Las Flores Intermediate and Tesoro High School, said, “It was important for me to encourage her to pursue what was interesting to her.”

In 2000, the father of four was named teacher of the year at Las Flores Elementary School. Erika, then 10 years old, entered a tomboy phase. “When she was elementary age, she was athletic. She tried ballet [and] competitive figure skating," then traded in her ice skates and tights for a surfboard and wetsuit.

Steven took her to Trestles, the popular surf spot for pros and amateurs.

“My dad carried three surfboards down, told me to choose one and go have fun,” Erika recalled. “He would be waiting for me on the beach.”

Eleven years later, over Father's Day weekend, she finished fifth in the 2011 National Scholastic Surfing Association's National Interscholastic Championships at Salt Creek. Sponsored by Nike, the event showcased top surfers from the colleges, high schools and middle schools nationwide.

"I wished for fourth place, but I'm still extremely happy,” said Erika, an English major on the Cal State Long Beach team.

“I was very proud of her,” Steven Cook said. “During a competition, not everyone can get first place. There's a lot to get out of it besides winning first place. I’m glad she did her best."

Surfing is not the only thing Erika has won. When she was a sophomore at Mission Viejo High School, she scored the grand prize on the reality TV series “Endurance Tehachapi,” which can be seen on YouTube. Erika and Franke Sisto of New Jersey, both 15-year-olds, made up the Red Team, endured to the end, and won a trip to Costa Rica. It was her first opportunity to surf the waves south of the border.

But it wasn’t her last. Surfing has allowed Erika to travel the world.

Her next stop was the warm coast of Brazil, where she competed with the Collegiate USA Team. While she was on the Saddleback College surf team, the Gauchos took first place in the state championships.

“I love being in the water, but really what surfing has done for me is all the traveling,” Erika said. “I love to surf and travel in warm places. ... I love the people, the food, the culture, everything."

She has also won events with the Christian Surfing Federation. Erika and several CSF teammates won a special trip to El Salvador. Specifically, it was a service mission. They collected clothes, toys, school supplies—and, of course, surfboards—and donated everything to a local orphanage there.

Erika is of Hawaiian, Chinese and Samoan lineage on her mother, Ululani's, side. The Cook children—Edward, Samantha, Erika and Rebekah—have family in Hawaii, where Erika rode the waves on the famed North Shores of Oahu and beautiful Kauai.

She might have caught the travel bug from her dad. “He hitchhiked to Morocco when he was 18,” Erika said. “He’s inspiring.”

A young adventurer, her father converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served a Mormon mission in Taiwan, where he studied Mandarin Chinese for two years. In 1982, he returned to the U.S. and married Ululani, who had returned from an LDS mission in Barcelona, Spain. The Cooks completed college at Brigham Young University, where they had their first child, Edward. Steven graduated with a major in Chinese and a minor in Asian Studies. Ululani has a B.A. in English.

Steven settled the young family in his wife's hometown of Lake Forest. Erika and her sisters were all born in Mission Viejo.

Steven's Chinese language skills might have saved his daughter's life. Last summer, more than 6,000 miles from home, Erika needed an emergency appendectomy—in China.

Erika, who dreamed of surfing on her third continent, was there on a kids-only backpack trip with her older brother, Edward. No parents, no guides. Before they left, Steven gave them a two-week crash course in Chinese. Who knew her appendix would crash?

In the hospital, over the phone, Steven translated for her, telling the Chinese nurses and doctors, "Give my daughter painkillers." Everything came out all right. 

Now she’s back home, finishing a formal education and riding the pounding surf. When Erika speaks of Steven, she pays him the highest compliment a parent can receive:

“He’s the person I most respect.”