Eight years ago, Rob Lange hitchhiked to San Diego State University to save parking money.

A little more than a month ago, he and his business partner, San Diego lifeguard Chuck Davey, had their company, Pocket Pump, featured in a commercial during the Super Bowl.

Pocket Pump won the grand prize?a one-minute Super Bowl commercial and $10,000 ? in a contest sponsored by Mail Boxes Etc. called “See Your Small Business on the Super Bowl.”

What a difference eight years makes. And seven weeks, for that matter.

After the one-minute spot was aired during the third quarter of the big game, sales of the portable ball pump took off, to say the least. Before the commercial aired, Pocket Pump received five to 10 calls a day, said Lange, who is a firefighter with the San Diego Fire Department. In the hours after the Super Bowl, Pocket Pump received 8,000 calls.

Last year, 30,000 Pocket Pumps were sold. In the week after the Super Bowl, 20,000 Pocket Pumps were sold, according to Lange. Before the commercial aired, Pocket Pump was carried in 500 sporting goods stores. Now it’s available in 1,500.

Lange said he and Davey contracted with a phone service, which handles orders for Pocket Pump, before they even knew they’d won the contest. They had to; it was estimated that 143 million people were watching when the commercial aired.

Lange saw the application for the “See Your Small Business on the Super Bowl” contest at Mail Boxes Etc. After thinking about it for a couple of days, he decided to enter Pocket Pump in the contest. He and Davey spent a couple of weeks filming footage for an optional five-minute video to enclose with the entry, which also included a 100-word essay.

“(The video) showed us on the beach playing volleyball, and calling that our research and development laboratory,” Lange said. “We said, ‘IBM and Xerox are envious of our facility’ ’cause we were out on the beach. That fit perfect, when I learned more about Mail Boxes Etc.”

Lange filed the application on Oct. 31, 1997, a Friday. By the following Tuesday, Pocket Pump had been named to the Top 10 group of

finalists, out of more than 4,000 entries. A film crew from Mail Boxes Etc. came to San Diego and filmed them playing volleyball and doing “research and development” on the sands of South Mission Beach, where they work out of a home office. By the beginning of December 1997, Pocket Pump was one of three finalists in the contest.

What happened next, neither Lange nor Davey could have imagined.

On January 15, Davey was aboard an old boat in Mission Bay, lighting it on fire for a lifeguard training exercise. There was an explosion, and Davey was engulfed in flames. He was hospitalized with an injured right hand, the only part of his body not covered by firefighting gear.

As a result of Davey’s injury, Pocket Pump will make a donation

to the UCSD Regional Burn Center. And Mail Boxes Etc. has said that it will match the donation from Pocket Pump.

Less than a week after Davey’s accident, Mail Boxes Etc. announced that Pocket Pump had won the contest at a party at Sea World.

“(With the two of us) being a firefighter and a burn victim, there’s nothing worse than a kid with burns,” Lange said. “The director of the Burn Center was at the announcement at Sea World that we won the commercial, so a lot of good is coming out of it.”

Lange invented the Pocket Pump one day in 1995 after he needed a pump while playing volleyball. He and his friends needed to inflate the ball, but no one had a pump. So Lange, who is also a paramedic, went home and made a small pump of out of the bulb off a blood pressure cuff and other parts.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Lange said. “I needed (a pump). I’m a paramedic, and I didn’t have a pump. I had some pieces of a blood pressure cuff, so I assembled a crude prototype.

“It was a hit. People liked it, and they wanted me to build them one.”

Pocket Pump was born. Lange obtained a patent for the product, and later enlisted Davey, who he had met when both were lifeguards, to be his business partner. Then they began selling the device to friends, and shopping it around to sporting goods stores.

Lange and Davey continue to work at their day jobs, and each put in at least 40 hours a week with Pocket Pump. And it’s a good thing they do: Lange and his wife just had a baby boy in January, and a few days before his accident, Davey found out his wife was going to have triplets.

Pocket Pump can be ordered through its web site, located at http://www.pocketpump.com.