Paddle Out,” the powerful documentary that premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February, starts with a breath and ends with a breath. Emmy-award winning filmmaker Sebi Lee fulfilled a promise to Monterey native Melissa Pappageorgas to tell her story after Melissa’s passing from cystic fibrosis in 2018. Making the film presented logistical and emotional challenges, which makes the cohesive, moving result all the more remarkable.
After Melissa’s death at age 33, it took Lee a year and a half to have the fortitude to start reviewing the often-heartbreaking footage she had shot, along with combing through Melissa’s notes and iPhone videos with the support of Melissa’s parents, Lori and Chris Pappageorgas.
“She left me all these breadcrumbs,” Lee explains. “I got to know Melissa intimately while shooting, and after her death, I got to know her better. She gave me the gift of being a storyteller and filmmaker. She made me a better person.”
Courage, in the face of shockingly difficult health challenges is presented over and over again in “Paddle Out,” but Melissa insisted she not be portrayed as inspiring.
“She wanted to be recognized as a regular person,” Lee says. “People would look at her surfing with her oxygen tank and say, ‘You’re so inspiring.’ It became a running joke. Melissa would say, ‘There’s nothing extraordinary about it. I’m just trying to live my life as fully as possible.'”
Lee first met Melissa when she was helping create a commercial featuring Melissa and the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP). After it wrapped, Melissa asked Lee for the footage to contribute to her own video project about living with cystic fibrosis.
“We became friends,” Lee shares. “I didn’t know how sick she had been when I first met her because she was so full of life.”
Diagnosed as a teenager with cystic fibrosis (CF), along with brother Nick, Melissa spent much of her life in and out of hospitals, while still graduating in four years from USC, like her brother.
“Usually, CF is diagnosed in childhood,” Melissa’s father Chris explains. “Cystic fibrosis affects all the organs in the body, but the main areas are the pancreas and the lungs. When CF reared its ugly head, doctors could barely keep Melissa and Nick healthy and out of the hospital, but one thing we could do was try to raise some money. We started a nonprofit, The Living Breath Foundation, to help individuals and families with scholarships, buying medications and expensive medical equipment needed…it’s very hard to shut down cystic fibrosis once it starts rolling.”
Paying for bereavements was another form of support the Pappageorgas family offered through the foundation. “We want to help in just about every way we can,” Chris says. “It’s heartbreaking watching your loved one slowly suffocate over the years.”
A newer medication, TRIKAFTA, has helped Nick tremendously, however Melissa’s lungs were too damaged to benefit from it by the time it came to market.
As seen in the film, surfing with groups like the Mauli Ola Foundation, meaning, “Breath of Life,” became a pivotal turning point in Melissa’s life. The foundation was created after research showed that hypertonic saline, which occurs in the air above the surface of the ocean, is a natural treatment for those suffering from cystic fibrosis, helping them expel the thick mucus that is trapped in their lungs. Professional surfers travel to different areas of the country for Surf Experience Days and help those with CF get in the ocean and on a surfboard. Melissa not only surfed with volunteers in Santa Cruz but even traveled with all of her medical equipment to Oahu. She soon found her own surf buddies locally, like professional surfer Shawn “Barney” Barron, who would take her out regularly, pushing her into waves and making sure she didn’t get hurt. Melissa’s parents were thrilled by the changes they saw in their daughter.
“She was able to clear her lungs,” Chris recalls. “After a good surf session, she wouldn’t cough all night like usual but would sleep through the night peacefully. She also was out with young kids who have CF and wanted them to know, ‘It feels like you are out here playing, but you’re helping the machines you have at home keep you healthy.’ She was very, very ill and yet she felt so much better after surfing that she wanted to do it again the next day.”
After three years of enjoying enough health to lift weights with her grandfather and surf almost daily, Melissa went into respiratory failure in 2015.
“She had zero chance of living without new lungs,” Chris recalls. “She’s as tough as nails, and she was in the ICU for 60 days. What kept her alive was thinking about Joey, her boyfriend at the time, and thinking about surfing every day. After 27 days, she got a lung transplant, and it took her six months to recover.”
In the film, Lee displays the often panicked notes that Melissa wrote when unable to speak, hooked up to an inordinate number of medical devices, showing the extreme anxiety she experienced from being trapped in a hospital bed. The enormity of the disease hits during that footage, along with Melissa’s incredible bravery to keep fighting.
As soon as she was out of the hospital, Melissa married Joey Rodrigues, to the delight of her friends and family. However, getting back in the ocean proved difficult, as Melissa now had to be hooked up to an oxygen tank even while surfing. Local surfboard maker, Bob Pearson of Pearson Arrow, created a special 14-foot surfboard for the couple that could handle the weight of two adults tandem surfing along with an oxygen tank. A meeting with Santa Cruz based O’Neill wetsuits resulted in the company creating a padded wetsuit for Joey with a compartment to hold Melissa’s oxygen tank on his back, protecting him from getting knocked out by the heavy tank, and Melissa’s mission was accomplished.
“At this point, Melissa thought the ocean was her medication,” Chris says. “She was determined to find a way to go in the water.”
Tragically, Melissa was losing her battle with cystic fibrosis, and her heart was also failing. When she was put on life support in 2018, family and friends rushed to her hospital bed. Even through immense suffering, Melissa wanted Lee to get her cameras and film.
“She couldn’t talk [due to the machines helping her breathe], and she made a gesture to me to get my cameras, so I ran to the hospital parking lot and got them out of my car,” Lee recalls. “We were all crying, taking turns saying goodbye to her, and when it was my turn, I told her, ‘I’m going to finish your film, I promise you.’ I didn’t realize until I finally watched the footage a year and a half later that she had nodded to acknowledge me. It gave me the courage to go on.”
The Pappageorgas family, Melissa’s husband Joey, and her many friends provided crucial support for Lee.
“This project was made with the help of angels,” Lee insists. “I started by putting everything on my own credit cards. I just couldn’t make a mediocre documentary. When Chris and Lori saw that it wasn’t going to be just some small project, they stepped in, and the Living Breath Foundation became a fiscal sponsor. The film goes along with the mission of raising awareness of cystic fibrosis.”
From there, miracles continued. Singer and surfer Jack Johnson offered the use of three of his songs for the film. “He shared the same philosophy as Melissa, that surfing and the ocean can save your life,” Lee says. Emmy-award winning filmmaker Andrew Seigman stepped in as a co-producer, along with many other talented storytellers, who Lee says immediately jumped at the chance to help.
“A lot of people were pouring in their love,” Lee says. “700 people came to her life celebration, and there was a double rainbow. There was a lot of magic.”
O’Neill is planning to sponsor a screening of
the film on the Monterey Peninsula soon, and details will be available at www.paddleoutfilm.com.
“We want to continue to use the film to keep fundraising for cystic fibrosis,” Lee says.
The contrast between the hypnotically beautiful ocean footage, shot with special drones, and Melissa’s raw suffering, shown with sometimes graphic vulnerability, takes viewers on an emotional trajectory that is both heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful. Tangible signs of joy, like hummingbirds, which Melissa wrote about in her journal, continually appeared after her death, even perching on her mother Lori’s finger.
“We all want evidence that she is around,” Lee shares. “A lot of her friends got hummingbird tattoos. I believe in this good energy.”
Chris says that Melissa’s experience has given him an even deeper compassion for other people.
“Sharing her story and inspiring kids with cystic fibrosis to get in the water was her last wish,” Chris says. “That’s why we are so supportive of the film. I love the beautiful moments we get to watch, like when she takes her surfboard off her car and heads into the water. Melissa was a team builder and a great leader. She exemplified that she would do whatever she could in those three years she had with new lungs, and she lived those years wonderfully.”
For more information, visit The Living Breath Foundation at www.livingbreathfoundation.org, “Paddle Out” at www.paddleoutfilm.com, and the Mauli Ola Foundation at www.mauliola.org.