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Mother-daughter surfers originally from Chino, California; regular competitors at the Makaha International Championships during the second half of the 1950s. "We were 27 years apart [in age]," daughter Vicky later wrote, "but both equally seduced by the challenge of the waves, the power of the ocean, and a never-ending quest for adventure."

Betty Pembroke was born (1913) and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of a wealthy mining engineer father. She was athletic and bold from an early age, with a life-long habit of challenging people, male or female, to impromptu arm-wrestling matches. In 1929, when Betty was 15, her family lost everything in the stock market crash and the Pembrokes relocated to Santa Monica, California, to start over. 

Betty began swimming in the ocean, and future surfing champion Pete Peterson soon took her out for the first time on a board. In 1932, she graduated from USC with a two-year degree in the still-new field of dental hygienics; not long after that she began swimming competitively for the prestigious Los Angeles Athletic Club, with an eye toward the 1936 Olympics—while on her first solo glider flight, however, she crashed and suffered a compound leg fracture, which left her in a cast for several months and ended her Olympic plans. 

In 1936, Betty married Ron Heldriech, a British-born jeweler, and the couple had two children, Vicky and Gloria, before Ron was convicted of stealing equipment from a Navy storage yard in San Pedro and sentenced to three years of hard labor. He was also a serial adulterer, which led Betty and her two daughters on a girls-only vacation to Oahu in 1954, where all three took surfing lessons during day trips to Waikiki. Later that year, the three moved from their home in Chino, California, to a small apartment near Diamond Head, at which point Betty and Vicky, an eighth-grader at Punahoe School, began surfing regularly. Ron followed and prior to their divoce in 1959, the two ran a custom jewelry business in Honolulu.

In 1956, Betty, age 43 and with less than three years' surfing experience, finished runner-up to Ethel Kukea in the Makaha International Surfing Championships, earning herself a ticket to Lima, Peru, for the 1957 Peru International contest—which she won. That same year, the family purchased a vacant 13,000-square-foot beachfront lot at Makaha; Betty and Vicky became regulars in a Makaha lineup that included George Downing, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole, Fred van Dyke, and other pioneering big-wave surfers. 

In 1957, Vicky, a high school junior, won the Makaha contest, defeating Kukea for the top spot. Betty failed to make the finals but returned the following year to finish 4th. The two regularfooters were a striking pair—tall and long-limbed (Betty was 5'8", Vicky was 5'10"); Betty with short bangs and an easy toothy smile; Vicky blond and fashionable. Both were featured in a 1958 

 article titled "They Ride the Wild Waves," and in 1960 they traveled together to Peru to visit and compete.

Betty later worked as a dental hygienist. Vicky became a teacher, and for much of her career worked with low-income students on the West Side of Oahu, near Makaha. Surfing would always be central to their lives, not just as an activity but as an expression of freedom and independence. “It’s a completely individual sport," Betty told the 

 in 1957. "You carry on alone. The waves are the only partner you need.”

 Wave Woman: The Life and Struggles of a Surfing Pioneer

, published in 2020, was featured in the 

annual Summer Reading issue of the Book Review section. 

Heldreich, Vicky and Betty

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