Technical Recovery: North of San Simeon - 2 Female victims

Two bodies pulled from the shoreline

Coroner’s investigators are trying to figure out how a woman and young girl died near Pico Creek and Highway 1; autopsies are set for Wednesday

By Kathe Tanner

TRIBUNE PHOTO BY MERLE BASSETT

The bodies of a woman and young girl were recovered south of San Simeon Bay on Thursday after visitors called 911 to report seeing them in the surf. Their names and cities of residence were not released.

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It was a mystery that authorities could not solve Thursday: how a woman and young girl died along the rugged shoreline north of San Simeon.

Volunteer divers pulled the bodies of a woman and girl from the ocean near Pico Creek and Highway 1 on Thursday morning.

Visitors had called 911 about 10 a.m. to report seeing two bodies in the surf. They were pulled out about an hour later.

Coroner’s investigators with the Sheriff’s Department are trying to find out how the pair ended up in the water.

Officials on Thursday would not release their names, whether they are related or where they lived.

Sheriff’s spokesman Rob Bryn said late Thursday that autopsies are tentatively scheduled Wednesday. Toxicology tests for alcohol and drugs could take up to four weeks to process.

Firefighters at the scene said the woman and girl might have been swept off rocks on the shore by a rogue or “sleeper” wave— a large wave that breaks without warning.

A couple of rescuers said the woman might have gone into the water to rescue the girl.

Crews on two U.S. Coast Guard boats searched the sea to make sure there were no other victims.

Investigators checked out a Mitsubishi SUV parked on the bluff that may have belonged to the woman.

County/Cal Fire Capt. Phill Veneris said the shoreline in that area is treacherous and tricky.

“There’s a lot of swell, a lot of big waves, a lot of rocks and riptides,” he said.

The ocean floor drops suddenly and steeply there from being about 6 inches deep to 4 or 5 feet deep, he said.

“Once you get into the water, it’s hard to get back out,” Veneris added.

The high tide at 10:15 a.m. was 5.8 feet, considered high for the area.

Emily Torlano, an off-duty Cambria firefighter and paramedic, was walking at San Simeon Cove about 2 miles north shortly before the call came in.

She said the sea was “perfectly flat, except for some giant waves coming out of nowhere” occasionally.

Torlano said those waves were so tall that they rose about three-quarters of the way up the San Simeon Pier’s pilings.

Cambria fire Capt. Steve Bitto said the wave faces at the time were “easily 8 to 10 feet” high, with “lots and lots of water moving real fast.”

Lee and Madeline Kuo of Irvine were on a spur-of-the-moment vacation and had arrived in the area a bit early for a 10:20 a.m. tour at Hearst Castle.

He pulled into a vista point about a mile north of San Simeon so they could watch the high-tide waves and take photos of the birds.

Madeline Kuo said a couple of tourists from Germany asked for help in identifying something in the surf.

After Kuo looked through her binoculars and saw two bodies floating together in the ocean, she immediately called 911 on her cell phone.

A shaken and saddened Kuo said later, “There was nobody around.Why did they go down there?”

Doing so “is bad judgment any time,” she said, because the waves can be so unpredictable.

Veneris estimated that about 20 firefighters from Cambria, Morro Bay, Hearst Castle and Cal Fire responded, along with the North Coast Ocean Rescue Team, county Technical Rescue Team, Cambria Community Healthcare District paramedics, State Park rangers and county sheriff’s deputies and coroner’s investigators.

Source: sanluisobispo.com