A California man is stuck in an Italian hospital after nearly drowning while on vacation in Italy. R.C. Schwertfeger, of Salinas, is suffering from irreversible brain damage and his medical team in Naples will not allow him to be transported home unless he remains on life support. His family estimates the air ambulance will cost $137,000 and they are working to raise the funds to bring Schwertfeger home to the states. The retired Central Coast teacher was on the trip of a lifetime, a family vacation to Italy to celebrate his 43rd wedding anniversary with his wife and to visit family living overseas. The couple had seen the sights in Italy and the two were spending their last days of vacation relaxing with their five grandchildren and daughter Marisa Merkle in Naples, where her husband is stationed. Merkle said just days before her parents were scheduled to fly home she and her parents took the kids to the neighborhood pool, but while Schwertfeger was swimming something went terribly wrong. Schwertfeger daughter said she was in the shallow end of the pool with the children and her father, who swims at the Monterey Sports Center every day, was in the deep end to swim laps. “He went in to just do a couple of laps, and I was not near him, my mom got in the pool, she also goes to the Sports Center all the time, she went to do a lap or two, and she pulled him from the water,” recounted Merkle in an interview on Thursday. Merkel said they were able to get her father to the hospital where his heartbeat was regained but she said he is now in a “vegetative state” and needs a respirator to breathe. The hospital has not been able to provide the family with any answers about what may have gone they said Schwertfeger did not suffer a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm in the pool. “Nothing, they have no answer at all, coupled with the fact that it is in Italian and we're working with a translator, we are so out of control with so many things right now,” she said. Schwertfeger’s wife, Mimi Schwertfeger said she wants to bring her husband home to a hospital in Monterey. Right now she is only able to visit once a day for 10 to 20 minutes at a time, and the family believes the care for her husband will be better in the States. “It’s overwhelming trying to be with him, and love him, and care for him, and then trying to get him home, all of the efforts in trying to get him home,” his wife said. The Italian hospital is requiring Schwertfeger be transported while on life support with a full staff and the bill needs to be paid before they will discharge the patient. Italian law is very strict on removing patients from life support but they said at this point their only focus is to get Schwertfeger home to Monterey and to a hospital.Friends and family back in the states have been working furiously to raise the money to bring the Salinas man home. “All of the friends, family, co-workers, we're just all rallying together to get the community aware, they need help, and they need our help to get home,” said Erika Yanez a co-worker of Mimi’s. Yanez works with Mimi at the Catholic Diocese of Monterey where the Salinas woman put 40 years of service. Schwertfeger retired after 30 years teaching for Monterey Peninsula Unified School District. He and Mimi are high school sweethearts who met at Seaside High School and built a life on the Central Coast, through church, work and volunteering. Longtime best friend of the couple, Solomon Terry said a GoFundMe account has been set-up to help raise the money needed to bring R.C. home. “I love him, and I miss them and I can't wait for them to get home,” he said. As of Friday morning, the GoFundMe had raised more than $90,000.