Free life-jacket exchange set for Parker boating safety building Saturday

La Paz County boaters will have one more chance Saturday to trade out worn flotation gear before the Parker Strip fills with summer traffic. The free life-jacket exchange is set for the La Paz County Sheriff’s Boating Safety Building, 8484 Riverside Drive in Parker, from 9 a.m. to noon.

The Parker Regional Chamber of Commerce & Tourism is listing the exchange as a practical safety step for families, frequent river users and visitors heading toward the Colorado River corridor as temperatures rise. The setting matters. Holding the event at the sheriff’s boating safety building ties the outreach directly to the agency most likely to respond if an outing turns dangerous.

Arizona Game and Fish Department is backing the Parker stop as part of a statewide summer campaign that begins in May. Boaters can bring old, worn-out or less-effective life jackets and leave with a new one while supplies last. The department says horse collar and off-shore style jackets will not be accepted, and the chamber says orange horseshoe Type 2 life jackets also will not be taken.

The safety message is blunt because the risk is real. Arizona Game and Fish Department said 87% of recreational boating drowning victims in the latest U.S. Coast Guard statistics were not wearing life jackets. The department also says each passenger must have a properly fitting, U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket available, and Arizona law requires passengers 12 and younger to wear one while on board.

That warning carries extra weight on the Parker Strip, where the Colorado River and associated backwaters draw anglers, boaters, paddlers and families into the same stretch of water. Arizona Game and Fish Department describes the area as a warm-water fishery centered on largemouth bass and smallmouth bass opportunity, managed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program.

The exchange also arrives as the wider lower Colorado River corridor continues to see serious incidents. KTAR News reported that two men were killed in an April 2026 boat crash on the Colorado River along the Arizona-California border near Topock Gorge, a reminder that fast water and high-speed recreation can turn fatal in an instant.

For La Paz County, the Saturday exchange is less about convenience than prevention. Getting the right jacket into the right hands before the next launch is one of the simplest ways to reduce the kind of emergencies river crews answer every summer.