When it comes to losing things at the beach a leg isn't on the top of the list.
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Yet that's what happened to Port Kembla surfer Rob Tome on Saturday afternoon.
Wearing a prosthetic leg following a 2020 car accident, Mr Tome paddled out to the breakers at Port Kembla on Saturday.
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Before he'd caught a wave, Mr Tome felt the leg coming loose. So he used his other leg to hold it in place while he paddled back to shore.
"As I got in close to shore, the wave reformed and flicked me off the board and that was enough for the leg to be lost in the surf," Mr Tome said.
"I got myself into shore and my support worker, who was there with me, he ripped his shirt off and dove straight in the water and spent the next half hour swimming around trying to find it."
The leg - featuring a blue camouflage pattern - didn't surface. So wife Hayley called for help on Facebook.
The support was overwhelming; within hours hundreds of people had shared the post.
At 8pm on Saturday, the news came that surfer Sean "Chappy" Gribble had found the leg while paddling back in after a surf.
"He dived under a wave and caught sight of the black and blue camouflage of the leg, then he saw the foot and thought 'there's Rob's leg'," Mr Tome said.
"So he dove down and dragged it up."
Mr Tome felt the efforts of Chappy and all the others who spread the word online and looked to help was "amazing".
"It shows there are good people out there and that people in the Illawarra do care. And when things like this happen, they'll band together."
Mr Tome lost his leg after a single-vehicle accident in late 2020 where he had what was believed to be an "undiagnosed medical event".
While in hospital he aimed to get back in the water as soon as possible; which made the decision between years of surgery and amputation easier.
"The doctors hadn't even cleared the room and my wife looked at me and said 'I think I know what you're going to do'. I said 'what's that?' and she said 'you're going to amputate it'."
There was also another driving factor to get up and about. The couple had lost a baby daughter to a congenital heart defect, and Mr Tome felt he needed to be at home rather than hospital for his other two children.
"The doctor said 'this is a pretty big decision, are you sure you want to go through with this?'
"I said 'mate, this isn't the hardest thing my wife and I had to go through'.
"It was about getting back home, rebuilding my body and getting back to the point where I'm a functioning father and trying to get myself back to normality."