Aminatu Noah always makes sure her son Elyjha’s phone is charged. Every now and then, she likes to revisit his photos and videos he captured of them together — playing in the park, going to the movies, laughing, singing.
“I realized when he died, that he had made memories of everything. Everything is on this phone, and it keeps me alive,” Noah said. “They say memories never die, and it helps when you can smile.”
The photos remind her of the 16-year-old whose Fortnite sessions kept her up at night, who dragged her to the Smorgasburg food festivals on weekends, who even used the money she gave him to buy his friends food, clothes and school supplies. In his phone, she also discovered new things about her son, like his passion for rapping, and his role as the friend that everyone came to for advice and encouragement.
Elyjha, a rising junior at the Academy for College Preparation & Career Exploration in Flatbush, went missing off Jacob Riis Beach on the evening of June 21, 2024 — just a week before his 17th birthday — along with his friend Christian Perkins, 17. The boys were two of seven New Yorkers to drown off city beaches that year.
On some mornings, Noah’s heart feels so heavy she struggles to get out of bed. But she always does. When not working in tech support at Brooklyn hospitals, she’s in classrooms and public forums, sharing her story and stressing the importance of water safety awareness.
“I try to go everywhere I can to spread the word,” she said. “I’m just trying to do the work, save lives if I can, and not have any other family go through what I’ve been dealing with.”
Noah’s partner in advocacy is Kibret Perkins, Christian’s mother. In May, they joined elected officials at the opening of Rockaway Beach to honor their sons and advocate for improved water safety measures and awareness. The ceremony took place in the shadow of the drowning death of Brandon Figueroa, an 18-year-old from the Bronx, who had gone missing just three days earlier.
Figueroa’s death took a toll on Noah. “I felt like I was reliving what his mother was going through, hearing she was at the beach, searching. I did that too — I was going to the beach every day,” she said.
Last year, at least six people drowned off city beaches. Each loss reignites Noah’s commitment to her mission.
“I’m just like, hey, this is happening too much. We’ve got to do something about it,” she said.
Elyjha and Christian didn’t know the dangers of rip currents and ocean swimming. Noah knows far too many New York City teenagers share that awareness gap. She hopes her story conveys the devastating impact that rip currents can have on entire families; in Noah’s case, the ocean took her only child.
The most important audience for Noah is children in Black and brown communities like hers, who often have the least access to swim instruction in a city where free lessons are limited and private options price out many working-class families.
Flatbush, where Noah raised Elyjha as a single mom, didn’t have a public pool until this past February, when the $141 million Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center opened. At the time of Elyjha’s death, his high school, located in the Erasmus Hall Educational Campus, had a pool but no swimming instruction.
In 2025, the city launched the “Elyjha Chandler and Christian Perkins Swim for Life” class at Erasmus Hall as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ $5.5 million investment to expand free swim safety classes — fulfilling a promise Adams made to Noah.
In June, Noah told her story to the world in a video created by Rising Tide Effect, a NYC-based water safety education nonprofit, as part of its campaign “Water Wise.”
In the video, Noah imparts a simple message: know what a rip current is, never swim without a lifeguard, and what you learn today can save someone tomorrow.
The public service announcement is directed at “those who need to hear it most,” said Rising Tide Effect’s founder Kate Krause, singling out 15-to 18-year-olds — who often go to the beach without parental supervision.
“We are going to where they are, which is largely social media,” Krause said. The video builds on “Respect the Rip,” a rip current safety guide featured on MTA buses.
Krause, a water safety advocate and commissioner on the New York State Temporary Commission to Prevent Childhood Drowning, met Noah a few months after Elyjha’s death. The two have been friends and close collaborators in advocacy ever since. Noah regularly speaks to Krause’s youth Swim Corps participants, and, earlier this month, took her first swim lesson ever with Krause.
“It became clear to me that I need to lift her voice and help her get the message out because we believe that a mother’s voice can do what statistics cannot do,” Krause said.
The burden of spreading water safety awareness shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of advocates and grieving parents, Noah said — which is why she’s pushing for mandated water safety instruction in all schools.
“I realized there’s so many kids who don’t know about swim safety,” she said. “Why not start in the schools? Why not make it part of their curriculum?”
A 332-page report by the commission from last September leads with a recommendation to “make water safety education a mandatory component of the PreK-12 curriculum in all schools, regardless of the availability of a pool classroom facility.”
The water safety curriculum doesn’t actually require a pool at all, Krause said, so it should be easy to implement universally — at least in theory.
However, despite persistent efforts from lawmakers and advocates alike, mandating water safety education in New York schools has so far been a Sisyphean task.
The New York State Senate and Assembly are mulling three proposals to mandate statewide water safety instruction in schools, introduced by state Sens. Joseph Addabbo of Queens, state Sen. Cordell Cleare of Manhattan, and Assembly Member Stacey Pheffer Amato, also from Queens. This is Addabbo’s seventh-straight attempt to mandate such instruction.
New York City council members and the Mayor’s Office have tried to improve access to water safety education, to varying degrees of success. In 2023, a City Council bill requiring swim classes for all second-graders passed, but Adams later cut it from the budget. The $5.5 million he later committed to boost swim programs brought instruction to 18,000 second-graders, about a quarter of the total second-grade population in NYC’s public schools.
On June 12, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced an expansion of the city’s summer “Learn to Swim” program to reach some 16,000 minors, up from nearly 6,000 last year — although it serves a limited number of children through a lottery system.
Some lawmakers have taken another route to prevent drownings: improving pool infrastructure, lifeguard corps, and access to educational resources. City Council recently passed a law requiring the Department of Parks and Recreation to develop written water safety material for public school students. A similar bill, the Every Child a Swimmer Act, was signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul last September.
These legislative actions represent meaningful progress, but fall short of the curriculum mandates advocates like Krause and Noah are fighting for.
“Not enough is being done, and we cannot get comfortable or complacent,” Krause said.
While Noah acknowledges progress is moving slowly, she remains optimistic.
“They say everything takes time. This is just the beginning,” she said. She hopes to meet with Mamdani to make a direct plea for mandated water safety instruction, as well as other immediate changes.
“We have to get more signs on these beaches, we have to get more lifeguards. We have got to do better,” she said. She and Perkins are calling to extend lifeguard shifts past 6 p.m., as many drownings off city beaches, like Elyjha and Christian’s, occur after hours.
The city has climbed out of the urgent lifeguard shortage of past summers — it staffed 1,082 in 2025 and is on pace to pass that this year following an “aggressive recruitment campaign,” per a NYC Parks spokesperson. The city has also unveiled a new fleet of “gator” vehicles to improve lifeguard response times, and works with a partner agency to identify swimmers in distress using drones.
Noah also wants the National Park Service, which manages Jacob Riis Park, to erect a memorial for Elyjha and Christian, which would remind swimmers of the dangers posed by rip currents, and the profound loss that some families have faced because of them.
Noah says she’s lucky. She has a strong support system, including friends, family, Perkins, and Elyjha’s friends, who call or visit her a few times a week. Watching them graduate high school and begin their lives while carrying the grief they share brings her deep pride and hope, she said.
On June 20, Noah and Perkins held their second annual basketball tournament in memory of their sons at Foster Park in Flatbush, where Elyjha would often hoop after school. They hoped for about 70 kids — over 300 showed up. Noah’s heart felt less heavy that day.
Some days are harder than others, but Noah always has her support system behind her, telling her to keep going.
“I’m just trying my best to keep my head above ground each day I get up, because I know there’s a bigger mission,” she said. “This is not about me.”
