By Mudra Machewad, Founder, LakeSafe Initiative | Sammamish, Washington
When the Safe Boating Campaign talks about wearing a life jacket, they’re asking every boater to make a choice that starts before they ever reach the water. That’s the part that stayed with me.
In August 2025, members of my community drowned at Lake Sammamish – a lake in Sammamish, Washington, where families from across the Eastside gather every summer weekend. Fathers. Husbands. Men whose wives and children were on the shore. Weeks before that tragedy, a boat carrying my neighbors unexpectedly flipped on that same lake. My dad, who doesn’t know how to swim, watched helplessly as the situation rapidly escalated. My mom was wearing a life jacket that day. She jumped in alongside a few others and helped pull everyone to safety.
A life jacket. That’s what changed the outcome of that first day. And in August, the absence of one is part of what changed everything else.
The Numbers That Demand Action
I started reading the statistics after August, trying to understand what happened – and what could have been different. The U.S. Coast Guard data is sobering: drowning is the cause of death in 76% of fatal boating accidents, and 87% of those victims were not wearing a life jacket. Those aren’t abstract numbers. They’re decisions made on dry land, before anyone stepped onto the water.
In King County, WA, there have been 190 preventable drowning deaths over the past seven years. More than half occurred in open water – lakes and rivers like the ones we drive past on a Saturday morning. And 60-70 percent of those deaths involved drugs or alcohol, which means prevention has to start long before the water’s edge.
The Safe Boating Campaign says it simply: real boaters wear life jackets. I’ve come to believe that, and I’ve built something around it.
What LakeSafe Initiative Is – and Why It Starts With Life Jackets
I started LakeSafe Initiative in September 2025 – the same month sophomore year began at Skyline High School – guided by a simple mission: Every Lake. Every Life. The goal is to prevent drowning deaths in open water through community-level intervention, starting at Lake Sammamish State Park.
Our four core programs target the gaps that appear most often when incidents occur: multilingual safety signage at open-water access points, loaner life jacket stations during peak season, visible shoreline rescue equipment, and community education that reaches families across language, background, and geography.
The life jacket loaner stations are at the center of that work – because not every family that arrives at a lake on a summer afternoon owns a life jacket, or thinks to bring one. A loaner station changes that. It removes the barrier at exactly the moment it matters. Research shows that one of the most powerful things you can do to increase life jacket use is simply make one available when and where people need it.
Since September 2025, a network of 18+ organizations has joined this effort – including Washington State Parks, King County Public Health, the Sammamish Community YMCA, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Eastside Fire & Rescue, the Washington State Department of Health, the Issaquah School District, and the Washington State Senate. Together, we’ve connected with over 5,000 community members and had more than 2,000 real conversations with families about what water safety looks like for them.
A May Moment Built Around the Same Message
On May 15 – the same day as Wear Your Life Jacket at Work Day – we are hosting LakeSafe Confluence 2026 at Lake Sammamish State Park (Meadow Shelter, 4:30–7:00 PM). Free and open to everyone.
The timing is intentional. Confluence brings together all 18+ partners for expert fireside conversations on public health, substance use, and marine safety; four hands-on prevention stations; and a live action commitment round where every partner organization publicly states one measurable action they will take for Summer 2026. Life jacket awareness will be front and center – aligned directly with the Safe Boating Campaign’s message on one of its most visible days of the year.
Confluence is followed immediately by Lake Safety Awareness Week, May 18–24, running in alignment with National Safe Boating Week (May 16–22). Because the people gathering at Lake Sammamish on a May afternoon are the same people who need to hear this message – and there is no better time to reach them than right before the season begins.
Why This Has to Be a Community Effort
The Safe Boating Campaign often says that safety on the water is everyone’s responsibility. I’ve seen what that looks like when a community actually takes it seriously. It looks like a state parks ranger pointing families toward a life jacket loaner station. It looks like a school district carrying water safety education into middle school classrooms. It looks like a fire department and a public health agency standing together at a community event, answering questions in multiple languages.
It also looks like a sophomore in high school who couldn’t stop thinking about a life jacket that was already in place – and the ones that weren’t.
The grief after August was real and it was heavy. But what followed surprised me: people and organizations showed up, one by one, and said yes. Not because someone told them to. Because they understood that prevention is possible, and that the window to act is right now – before peak season, before Memorial Day, before the next family walks down to the water without a life jacket within reach.
Join Us This May
LakeSafe Initiative is working toward permanent multilingual signage and life jacket loaner stations at Lake Sammamish State Park before this peak season, expanding its youth ambassador program across the Issaquah School District, and building the partnerships and community trust that can carry this prevention model to other lakes across Washington State and beyond.
Every lake deserves this. Every family does too.
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest on May 15, come to Confluence. Wear your life jacket. Bring someone who needs to hear this message.
Learn more at lakesafeinitiative.org/lakesafe-confluence-2026