By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

Dressed in a wet suit, scuba tank in hand, Dan LaDue insists he has a real job.

LaDue, the vice president of Shamrock Bolt in Pittsburg, Kan., says he wasn’t looking for a second job. The husband and father was busy overseeing the sale of nuts and bolts when he was caught off guard by a passion he hasn’t been able to shake.

“My daughter wanted to dive and my wife said one of us is going with her, and it ain’t going to be me,” LaDue said of his first experience with scuba diving.

LaDue said he had never thought of participating in the sport before and certainly had no idea his first dive would dictate how he would spend his time and money during the next three years.

“We (LaDue and his daughter) did that class together three years ago and I fell in love with it right away,” LaDue said. “I now have around 525 dives under my belt. I really enjoy it.”

LaDue recently received his Dive Master Certification, allowing him to continue his training to become a certified diving instructor. He now spends his evenings traveling throughout Missouri and Kansas giving others a taste of the hobby he’s hooked on.

“Anywhere I dive, I’m happy,” LaDue said. “I love the sport and decided I wanted to help the students.”

Grady and Deb Weston, owners of Extreme Sports Scuba in Joplin, say they have seen the addiction take hold in many others. The Westons have owned and operated Ed’s Electric for 23 years. The scuba shop is attached to the electric business and Grady says it’s mostly a way to support their hobby. Grady says when he originally opened Extreme Sports, he never expected the kind of response from the surrounding area.

“This is what we do so we can keep the scuba shop prices low,” Grady said motioning to Ed’s Electric.

Grady said the sport is growing every year as it becomes safer and Extreme Sports Scuba graduates more than 100 beginning divers a year at their Joplin location and several hundred more in advanced divers and out-of-town classes. The store is in its ninth year.

“Scuba’s something that after we started, became more of a family sport,” Grady said. “I’d say 50 percent of our trainees are women now. That’s something new in the last five years. It used to be 25 percent women because diving was seen as one of those macho sports. We can also certify divers as early as 10 years old.”

Grady says the sport of diving is a little like golf in that the initial cost for equipment is expensive, but after that there is little cost. Classes across the state range from $185 to $300, and a quality set of equipment usually runs about $1,200. After that investment, it costs $4 to fill up an airtank and head into the water.

“It’s a sport normal people can afford,” Grady said.

The instructors all have day jobs and LaDue admits no one is going to get rich teaching scuba classes. But averaging 175 dives a year, LaDue still can’t seem to shake the scuba bug and said he wears his diving shirts to work and discusses his hobby with anyone who will listen. Grady can be found most often on the scuba side of his building and said he averages 250 dives a year.

Their passion for diving leads the two men on a quest for new diving locations and LaDue and Grady have been to Aruba, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean in the search of the perfect underwater view.

Their hobby takes a more serious turn when they are called from their everyday jobs to take on another title, not of instructor, but emergency worker, as they suit up to help the Newton County Dive Team search for bodies.

“We’ve trained a lot of the divers on the team,” Grady said.

“We train a lot,” LaDue said. “But I would rather train every day from now on and never use it, than have to pull one more body out of the water. When they call, it (diving) quickly goes from pleasure to business.”

Most of the time, LaDue and Grady try not to think about diving in that way and focus instead on the underwater world they live for that few others ever see.

“Once you get to doing it, you’re hooked,” LaDue said. “It only takes one time.”