You went in for one wave. Just one. Then your phone — which was definitely, for sure, zipped in your pocket — is somewhere in six inches of Tamarack Beach surf, and you're doing that frantic hands-and-knees search everyone does, patting wet sand like it owes you an apology.
Found it? Good. Now put the rice away.
Why rice doesn't do what everyone thinks
Rice pulls moisture out of the air around it, slowly, over days — not out of a phone's charging port in an afternoon. By the time rice would make any real difference, corrosion has already started on the board contacts, and rice dust gets into the port and speaker mesh on top of the sand that's already in there. You've traded one problem for two.
Sand is the bigger threat at a beach like Tamarack or South Carlsbad State Beach, more than the water itself. It's abrasive, it packs into the charging port and speaker grille, and it doesn't dissolve or evaporate — it just sits there until something forces it out.
What to do in the first five minutes
Power it off. Don't charge it, don't plug in headphones, don't press the power button repeatedly to check on it. A phone with water inside a live circuit is how a fixable problem turns into a fried logic board. If it's still on, hold the power button down until it shuts off — don't wait for the battery to die on its own.
Skip the rice. If you want to do something in the meantime, a sealed bag with silica gel packets — the kind that come in shoe boxes and vitamin bottles — pulls moisture more effectively than rice does, but even that's a stopgap, not a fix.
What I do when you bring me a wet phone
I open it up. Not "let it dry and see" — I open the case, look at the board, and clean any corrosion off the contacts with isopropyl alcohol before it spreads further. I check the battery for swelling, because a swollen battery from water intrusion is a safety issue, not just a performance one. Then I test charging, speakers, and the cameras — the first three things water usually takes out.
Sand-only damage, with no actual submersion, is usually the faster fix: compressed air, a proper port cleaning, and sometimes a port replacement if salt air has already started corroding it even without a specific dunk.