- [Narrator] This Great Big Story was made possible
by Wells Fargo.
Established 1852.
Re-established 2018.
(elegant music)
- [Mitali] The water we swim in is dangerous,
and someone has died in it.
Growing up, I had people tell me
that the water was so dangerous
that there were three prisoners who didn't make it.
And the reason Alcatraz was there
was because they had sharks in the water,
and you can't swim at all,
but now I know that's not true.
I'm Mitali.
I'm 16, and I've swum from Alcatraz
to San Francisco 48 times.
- I'm Anaya.
I'm 12, and I've done the Alcatraz swim 38 times,
and Mitali's my sister.
- I used to be the youngest person
to swim the span of the Golden Gate Bridge,
but my sister holds that world record now.
The first time I swam Alcatraz was when I was 10 years old,
and I was inspired by my friends who had swum it before me.
We train once a week every Sunday
with our open water swim team.
From just Alcatraz to the beach,
that takes me around 35 to 40 minutes,
but at my fastest time, it's 27 minutes.
- [Man] Guys, wanna know the water temperature?
57.5 right now.
- [Anaya] That water is freezing,
but you feel so good because you're in the open ocean.
The water's murky, so you can't really see anything,
but you can feel the water,
and you feel like you're on top of the world,
but you're in the middle of the ocean.
It's hard to have that mental strength that you can do this
because it's just so dangerous and unusual to do it.
- [Mitali] And so whenever we swim,
when I take a breath and she takes a breath,
we end up looking at each other,
and it's really comforting to see that there's someone
out there with you while you're swimming.
- [Woman] Good job, children!
(gentle music)
- [Mitali] People are generally very shocked.
That's the first response because it's something
that no one's ever really thought of doing.
- [Anaya] I grew up with this,
so I never knew a world where it was unusual to do this.
If other kids wanna do this, I encourage it.