. >> reporter: a tiny whisp of a woman but with backbone that would not quit. even as a frail old lady, she still had the presence of a woman who turned an incident into a historic moment. 10 years ago rosa parks came to the bay area to speak at san francisco state. she talked with ktvu's rob roth about that day now 50 years ago when she got on a bus in montgomery alabama after a hard day's work as a seamstress. she and three other black people sat down in the middle of bus where blacks could sit, but would have to leave if a white person wanted the seat. >> it had always bothered me and i think others too. but since they considered it the law it was not very easy to defie their rules. >> reporter: a few stops later a white man got on and could not find a seat. >> he wanted to know if i was going to stand up i told him i was not. he said if you don't stand up i'll have your arrested and i said he could do that. >> reporter: rosa parks was arrested, fingerprinted and fined. a reverend named martin luther king brought a lawsuit against the bus company. the u.s. s

a tiny -- i'm telling you, no thinner than a grand of this hair, one hair, that jellyfish came whisping lips, took me into searing pain, started to take my heartbea down, and i couldn't breathe. >> none of that sounds good. and you see that she had all of those experts on board, she prepared a lot. how will you combat that? that's your greatest concern. >> yeah, definitely. she spent a lot of time and research working with the best people in the field. my husband and i spearheaded this, and the crew we have around us, we have done research as well and there are one or two of new sorts of techniques which we're learning about as we speak. and we'll implement them during the swim. not quite ready to go into details yesterday. but we'll have interesting facts to share in the next month or two. >> we'll be watching and rooting for you. the last thing i want to say, we've run out of time. the website, you're asking for volunteers to help you out to join your crew. is that -- is that accurate? >> well, yes. because from australia, it would be really hard to bring people over. so we're putting