Victory Against Polluters Was Personal : Environment: Director of Surfriders figures that forcing two pulp mills to stop dumping toxics into the ocean is a fitting memorial to his son.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Jake Grubb, the new executive director of the Surfrider Foundation, speaks warmly, proudly, intensely about his teen-age son, Graham.

“For reasons I never understood, Graham grew up loving the outdoors,” the father said. “He was compelled to know about and be in the outdoors. And that was his interest, 110%, at all times, from since he was old enough to speak.”

The father spoke about his son in the past tense, for Graham Grubb died a year ago this month at the age of 18 in a senseless accident. Graham and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Amanda Ciskowski, were killed when an intoxicated motorist drove into the tent in which they were camping at San Onofre State Park on Sept. 9, 1990.

Last month, the driver of the car was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of vehicular manslaughter.

At the time of the accident, the grief-stricken father requested that friends remember his son by donations to the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit environmental group based here.

Surfrider, formed by a group of surfers in 1984, now has 15,000 members nationally and is devoted to preserving shorelines and clean oceans.

The efforts have begun to pay off.

The foundation is celebrating a high point in its short history: a landmark legal victory announced last week in its battle to clean up the ocean. For Grubb, it was a triumph as much personal as professional, serving as a poignant memorial to his late son.

“My son always loved surfing and was a member of Surfrider Foundation from the year it was founded,” Grubb said.

On Sept. 9--exactly a year after Graham Grubb’s death--Jake Grubbs and other Surfrider Foundation officials announced that they had won an out-of-court settlement with two big pulp mills in Humboldt County. The mills agreed to pay $5.8 million in fines and stop polluting the ocean.

Environmental Protection Agency attorney Christopher Sproul said the settlement set a precedent in ocean-water protection, producing a new standard--safety for sea creatures--on effluents going into the ocean.

“It was just a coincidence that the announcement came exactly a year after Graham’s death,” Grubb said. “But one (Surfrider Foundation) board member suggested to me that there almost seems to be something metaphysical about how things have happened.”

The father, who owns a graphic publications business in Dana Point with his wife, became even closer to the Surfrider Foundation after his son’s death.

Last spring, he was urged by a foundation board member to apply for the full-time position of executive director. Grubb was selected from a field of 43 applicants. He took over as Surfrider’s chief of staff on Sept. 1.

Grubb, 42, is a 6-foot, hazel-eyed man with a thick shock of black hair peppered with flecks of gray. He and his wife, Mary Mayer-Grubb, live in Laguna Niguel with their daughter, Hallie, 2 1/2.

Grubb has also written three books on ocean sports, “Hobie Cat Sailing,” “The Sailboard Book,” and “The Bodyboard Handbook.”

“I grew up in Naples, in Long Beach, and I began surfing when I was 11,” Grubb said. “I grew up surfing with my friends, and then I grew up surfing, all over again, with my son and his friends.

“Memories like those are one of God’s gifts. You don’t know why you’ve been given something like that, but you have it forever, whether it’s over or not.”

The senior Grubb majored in communications at San Diego State University. After working for KPBS-TV in San Diego, he started Grubbstake Media in Dana Point.

“What the business does is package information,” Grubb said. “We make information vehicles for companies in which they sell themselves, their facilities or their products.”

The business has been operated by his wife, Grubb said, since he took over running the Surfrider Foundation.

“One can make more money in the commercial setting,” Grubb said. “And before having lost Graham, my life was much more commercially motivated. But matters of monetary motivation and commercial success have lost a lot of their luster to me since Graham’s death.”

Asked whether he, in effect, is now working in a job that is a memorial to his son’s interest in surfing and the environment, Grubb said, “Yes, I guess that’s what it is.”

He added: “Graham, you know, was a member of Dana Hills High School’s surf team. And when he started college (Saddleback College in Mission Viejo), he was very interested in oceanography. His room and his car were always full of books about the ocean and about the forests.”

Grubb said one of his goals as the foundation’s new executive director is to reach out to as many young people as possible, getting them interested at an early age in preserving the shoreline.

“Young people bring so much energy and enthusiasm to what we’re trying to do,” Grubb said. “It always impresses me how many young volunteers show up at Surfrider to help us when we need manpower.”

Grubb continued to describe his job, but then paused.

“I wish he were here to see this,” he said.

Asked whether his son would be pleased that his father is now so closely tied to the surfing-environmental movement, Grubb smiled before responding.

“I think Graham would be saying, ‘Go for it, Dad!’ ” he said.