[1] His later work includes the syndicated action drama, SAF3, and A Chance For Children, a charitable foundation that benefits homeless and at-risk youth.

[2] Bonann attended Palisades High School from 1967 through 1970,[4] and since his allergies ruled out any outdoor sports, he joined the swim team.

[5] Contact lenses corrected his vision, but swimming with them proved difficult, so Bonann needed special visual aids to see the walls of the pool.

He continued to swim with the CSULB team, alongside Olympic athletes Gunnar Larsson, Klaus Barth, and Hans Fassnacht,[4] until 1974 when he graduated with a BA degree in journalism.

After the completion of rookie academy, he was given his choice of post, and served in lifeguard tower #18 on Will Rogers State Beach,[5] a short distance from his family home in West Los Angeles.

[6] He served on the beaches of the Central Section, including Topanga, Will Rogers, Santa Monica, Venice, and Del Rey.

[2] In the summer of 1977, while working Will Rogers State Beach, Bonann performed a routine rescue of some children who were caught in a riptide.

The children's father was Stu Erwin, Jr.,[4] who worked for MTM Enterprises, a television production company run by Grant Tinker, the future chairman and CEO of NBC.

[5] In 1989, while scouting locations in Venice Beach, California with the Baywatch producers and writing staff, Bonann was approached by a teenager who had lost his friend in the water.

Bonann swam out and made three surface dives before finding the boy, who had been submerged for several minutes, and revived him using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while treading water.

The first project under his new banner was another documentary for the USOC called City of Gold about the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

[2] After meeting Stu Erwin Jr. of Grant Tinker's MTM Enterprises in 1977, he pitched the idea, which at that time was called A.C.E.S., for Aquatic Corps for Emergency Service.

[2] Due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, GTG was unable to use a written script to pitch the show, so Tinker asked Bonann to produce a video sales presentation.

[5] Tinker sold the rights to the program back to Bonann for ten dollars,[2] and along with Schwartz, Berk, and the show's lead actor, David Hasselhoff, Bonann launched the series in first-run syndication,[5] resulting in ten more seasons, including two in Hawaii, and even a short-lived spinoff series called Baywatch Nights.

[14] In 2008, Bonann and wife Tai Collins, a writer on Baywatch, began developing an action drama series called Rescue 3.

[14] Bonann began filming SAF3 in Cape Town, South Africa in 2013, and twenty episodes were produced independently for first-run syndication.

In 1992, Bonann and his wife, Collins, launched a non-profit organization called The Camp Baywatch Foundation[10] to benefit homeless and at-risk youth.

[15] The foundation began by teaching inner city children about water safety through a week-long summer camp at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.