Making waves: California surf instructor challenges State Parks’ permit monopoly
California native Helina Beck grew up mesmerized by her big sister Holly’s passion for surfing. Holly, who is ten years Helina’s senior, didn’t just love surfing; she excelled at it. Eight-year-old Helina watched as her sister travelled the world, garnered sponsorships and magazine features and even starred in a reality TV show. When Helina expressed her own interest in following in sister’s footsteps, Holly couldn’t have been more excited to step in and show her little sister the ropes.
From that point on, surfing became Helina’s life. In the beginning, Helina admits she was good, but not great. “I could go out and do it, but I wasn’t necessarily really good.” But she was able to strengthen her natural abilities, thanks to her high school surfing team. “I was being coached and was competing in these high school surf contests, and that’s what really pushed me to get a lot better at it and really fall in love with it,” she says.
High school was filled with early-morning surf classes, summer surf camps, competitions, and even working as an instructor for a local surf school. After graduation, there was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to stay in California and attend a college with a surfing team. And she did just that at Cal State San Marcos, where she studied psychology—a choice that had an unexpected impact on her surfing.
Psychology majors know that if you want to have a career in the field, you need to get a graduate degree or a Ph.D. Ultimately, Helina decided that a graduate degree wasn’t for her and took the entrepreneurial route instead, starting her own surf school. But her background in psychology remained at the forefront of her mind.
As Helina recalls, “As I was going through this psychology degree, I realized that it was helping me as a surf instructor and being able to hold space and understand people in this intense situation.” She continued:
For some, the ocean is intimidating, and people are afraid. You have to be able to read the person and meet them where they’re at in order to come up with a good teaching strategy. So I felt like that element of reading people came from studying psychology. And that’s when I decided that these two things fully overlap and intertwine.
In 2013, Helina founded Wavehuggers. The name is a play on the term “treehuggers” and a nod to her love for the planet. But as her work took on a greater role in helping people’s mental well-being, the meaning has evolved. As Helina says, “Give the waves a hug and they’re going to give you a hug right back.”
Being out on the water can be just as therapeutic for some people as sitting on a therapist’s couch. And Helina has been fortunate enough to build a business that offers her students surfing lessons and peace of mind.
A standout moment for Helina was getting to work with a father and son who were struggling to cope with the tragic and sudden loss of their wife and mother. The father had brought his special needs son to California as a vacation from their grief and signed up for a surfing lesson. As Helina recalls, “It was really beautiful because they were smiling and having fun. By the end of that surf session, the father told me it was life changing.” Surfing, she says, “has totally changed my life. So I think it’s really cool when I am witnessing it changing the life of other people who are surfing with us.”
Helina understands the healing nature of the water. Her favorite part about surfing is experiencing the calm that washes over her when she’s out on the water. As she describes it:
I have an anxious, busy mind that goes a million miles a minute constantly. But when you’re out surfing, it’s pretty impossible to think about anything else. You sit out there, you see these waves coming, and there’s this level of energy that you feel in the ocean. As cheesy as it sounds, you feel the energy in your body and the only thing going through your mind is ‘here comes a wave.’ And you can catch it and ride and it feels like a dance. It totally brings you back to center.
Since it began, Wavehuggers has taught more than 12,000 people how to surf and employs 12 regular instructors year-round, and as many as 30 during the busy season.
But the success of Helina’s business is now at stake, thanks to a California State Parks regulation that bans teaching on several northern San Diego County beaches.
Riding against the tide of unconstitutional regulations
California State Parks prohibits “soliciting” on State Parks’ beaches unless you have a contract with the Department. When Helina inquired about acquiring said contract, the Department refused to even consider her. But it’s not just Helina who has been denied this opportunity. In fact, only two surf instruction businesses have secured a contract in the past 17 years. In the absence of a permit, the Department ordered Wavehuggers to cease and desist from giving lessons on the applicable beaches.
Helina tried everything in her power to get the permits she needed—an ordeal which turned out to be immensely frustrating. Every time she called California State Parks, she was told that permits could be dealt with only via email. Yet every time she tried to get answers over email, she would wait weeks for a response, only to be met with a boilerplate “Thank you for your interest, but we have no openings” response. This continued for years.
Losing access to such a wide range of beaches has huge implications for her business. It also makes no sense that, for an area so large, there are only two available permits. What makes even less sense is that both permits are held by the same surfing school.
Helina was relentless in following up with the Parks Department. Even though the permits are supposed to have an end date, every time she inquired as to when a new slot would open up, she was told, “We don’t know.” Meanwhile, the lucky holders of the permits were able to continue renewing their contracts without issue.
The Parks Department regulation isn’t just frustrating; it’s unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits State Parks from choosing which surfing schools will succeed and which will fail. By granting permits to a select few without even considering all the others, they are violating this protection. Surf instruction is taught through spoken word and individualized guidance and demonstrations. Restricting this instruction is also a violation of the First Amendment.
Helina was not going to stay silent. She was able to connect with Pacific Legal Foundation through another of our surf instructor clients who is fighting similar laws. Now we are teaming up to fight back and protect Helina’s constitutional rights.
While Helina is a bit worried about how her lawsuit will be perceived by the broader surf instructor community, she knows that fighting is the right thing to do.
As she puts it, “There are so many directions that I want to take the business. And the biggest roadblock is these permits.” She continued:
In our surf therapy programs, the way that we guide our participants is to help them practice using their voice. You deserve to take up space and you need to speak for yourself and advocate for yourself. So instead of just sitting back and just going softly about it and waiting and dealing with this unfair system, I’ve just decided I’m going to really fight for myself and anybody else in my position. So the way that I will feel about it is I went out there and I made changes. I’m making waves.
California cannot grant exclusive teaching privileges to favored businesses while denying others the right to earn a living through constitutionally protected instruction on beaches that belong to all Californians.
