Randy ‘Crawdaddy’ Miod, a Malibu Surfing Legend, Dies in LA Fire at 55 - WSJ

Since he was a kid, Randy Miod wanted to be at the beach. Once he got there, he never left.

Growing up in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, Miod skipped school as a teenager to take the bus to Malibu’s famous Surfrider Beach. He was missing so many classes in high school that his mother was worried he wasn’t going to graduate, so she hid his board.

She had reason to be worried: Instead of a high-school diploma, he got his GED, and instead of a 9-to-5, he worked restaurant jobs that afforded him maximum time at the beach. In his 20s, he started renting an apartment in a faded red house in Malibu that was built in 1924. It sat right on the Pacific Coast Highway, across from the beach and a short drive to Surfrider and its famous Malibu Wall. He never moved. Over the next 30 years, he became a fixture in the Malibu community, described by friends and locals as both a character and an icon.

“Malibu has a pier and it’s got many, many, many different pilings in it that hold the pier up,” said Jean Pierre “Peli” Pereat, a Malibu-based therapist who uses surfing to help patients. “And Randy was one of those pilings.”

via www.wsj.com