LA JOLLA — Around 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 3, Jim Ridgway was walking along Coast Boulevard near the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art when he heard something he doesn’t usually hear on his morning stroll. “I heard this voice calling out, ‘Help me, help me, save me,’” said the 70-year-old retired Wall Street trader who moved to La Jolla 12 years ago. “I asked someone standing near me, ‘Did you hear that?’” Ridgway and three nearby men rushed down to the water to find a middle-aged woman in full scuba gear entangled in kelp just offshore near the Children’s Pool. A female onlooker called 9-1-1 while the men tried to get the diver to shore. Two other divers tried to reach her also, but they were fighting the strong current. “She was using all her strength to untangle herself and once she’d get near shore, a wave would take her right back out again,” said Ridgway, a Minneapolis native who worked in New York City for 30 years. Once Ridgway and the men — two tourists and another man who Ridgway said had recently undergone surgery — managed to get the diver’s heavy tank off, they pulled her out of the water. About that time, lifeguards and paramedics arrived, Ridgway said. They had been responding to other incidents and arrived about five minutes after the 9-1-1 call, San Diego lifeguard Sgt. Ed Harris told the Associated Press. Ridgway said it took the strength of all four men to get the woman out of the current. “I’m not that young and we weren’t professionals or very big people,” he said. “We got knocked around pretty good.” Once on shore, Ridgway said the woman was “very spent.” “The girl had absolutely no energy and had swallowed a lot of water,” he said. “We were just happy she was alright.”