'The luckiest guy': Shark bite victim recounts his 'shredded' arm, stranger who saved him

WEST PALM BEACH — A shark sank its teeth into Steven Reinhardt’s right arm on what became the most painful of all of the Palm Beach Gardens man's morning swims.

Even with a cast wrapped around the arm laced with stitches and a graft of skin missing from his leg, he counts himself as “the luckiest guy.” The one person on the nearby beach that morning had medical experience and knew exactly what to do to help him.

“In the water, I felt something hit my arm and thrash it around,” Reinhardt, 60, said Wednesday at St. Mary's Medical Center since Nov. 5, the day of the attack. “I lifted my arm up and it looked like a Halloween prop.

"I thought I was going to lose it. I knew I had to get to shore before I bled out or passed out.”

The only person on the beach knew how to tie a tourniquet

Reinhardt is a former anatomy professor at Florida International University, so he noticed exactly where his arm was injured and knew he had to swim as fast as he could to get back to shore. He never got a glimpse of the shark that bit him.

Rough waves hit him and tossed him against rocks on the 100-yard swim back to the beach behind Lost Tree Village, but he made it just in time to meet Eva Karsai, who was collecting seashells on the beach.

“It was tough for me, but fear kept me going,” said Reinhardt, a boxer who swims as part of his training. “I think my experience fighting got me used to fear. Every time I get in the ring, I have some fear, but I just have to go through it.”

Reinhardt noted that the water was so murky that day that he couldn't see his hands in front of him, and there were tarpon leaping from the water beside him. He said he knew shouldn’t have swam out so far.

When Karsai spotted Reinhardt stumble onto the beach, she called 911 and used a string from his swim trunks and a nylon ribbon to tie two tourniquets on his arm to limit his blood loss.

The paramedic that arrived soon afterward said she saved his life.

“(Reinhardt’s) arm was bleeding like crazy. Honestly, he is the hero,” said Karsai, 63, of West Palm Beach. “He handled himself so well. He was so strong and he didn’t panic.”

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Karsai happened to take a longer stroll more northward than she typically goes on her beach visit, which started at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park. She said she didn’t see another person for miles in both directions.

“I’m so grateful that I was there at the right place and the right time,” said Karsai, who worked as a midwife while living in Hungary. “I truly believe that was my purpose for the day.”

Reinhardt never had sustained a shark bite before, but said he sees sharks “all the time” on the swims he takes a few times a week. About three months earlier, he kicked a shark, but swam away unscathed.

He says he will keep going for regular swims, but he may not swim again at the beach where he was bit.

Shark bite victim's arm was 'shredded,' paramedic says

Gordon Wilson, the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue firefighter and paramedic who treated Reinhardt, is a shark-bite survivor himself. He has helped many attack victims during the past 25 years, but said this was one of the worst bites he has seen.

Wilson focused on controlling the bleeding by tying a medical-grade tourniquet on Reinhardt’s arm and bandaging it up as soon as he saw him. Then he took him in an ambulance to the trauma center at St. Mary’s, the area's trauma center.

When Wilson reunited with Reinhardt at the medical center on Wednesday, the day of his release, he was overjoyed to see healthy color return to his face.

“The best word I can use to describe (Reinhardt’s) arm when I saw it is shredded. There were lacerations everywhere,” Wilson said. “It’s a unique, good feeling to see him smiling and moving his arm now.”

Surgeries after shark bite required skin graft from thigh

Reinhardt spent 10 days at the medical center, where he underwent two surgeries to close the wounds on his arm, which the shark ripped up from his biceps to his wrist. Surgeons grafted a patch of skin from his right leg for the closures.

Stopping the bleeding is the first course of action after a shark bite, because bleeding out is the greatest threat to life. After a patient is stabilized, infection becomes the top concern.

A lab at St. Mary’s studies the effects that contact with a shark’s mouth can have on the human body. It has found a greater amount of bacteria the closer sharks are to shore.

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Dr. Matthew Ramseyer, the surgeon who treated Reinhardt, said that while he lost a significant amount of blood, he didn’t need a blood transfusion, which would have led to a longer stay in the hospital.

It was the worst shark bite that Ramseyer managed himself and the third bite that St. Mary’s has treated this year.

“Mr. Reinhardt is very motivated and he’s in excellent shape. He is very fortunate to not have any major arterial or nervous injury,” Ramseyer said. “The majority of the injury was soft tissue, so his recovery has been very speedy.”

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Reinhardt is expected to once again have full mobility of his arm. He is relearning how to make a fist in physical therapy, a necessary thing for a boxer, along with other hand exercises.

Florida leads the world in shark bites, UF study finds

Wilson said the best way to stay away from a shark attack in the ocean is to avoid swimming in murky water and being aware of the blacktip shark migration period, which roughly runs from January to April.

Florida leads the world in shark bites, according to a report by the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. The report logged 82 shark attacks in Palm Beach County since 1882 and found that 15% of bites in Florida are from blacktip sharks.

Palm Beach County has the third-most shark attacks since 1882 out of all other Florida counties. The greatest concentrations are in Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, which some call the “shark bite capital of the world.”

Maya Washburn covers northern Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida-Network. Reach her at mwashburn@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida man survives shark bite with help of stranger on beach