Jesse Billauer

Jesse Billauer is a surfer from Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, born on February 24, 1979. At seventeen, on March 25, 1996, he struck his head on a shallow sandbar after a wave knocked him off his board, breaking his neck at the C6 level and leaving him a quadriplegic. Doctors told him he would never surf again, but he returned to the water by adapting his technique and equipment, a form of para surfing, and became a role model for other surfers living with injuries. In 2005 he became the first quadriplegic surfer to ride the waves of Cloudbreak in Fiji, using a power-assisted board made by Wavejet. He founded the nonprofit Life Rolls On Foundation, which he has led as executive director and chief executive since 2013, and his story was told in the 2003 documentary Step Into Liquid.