Edited

2010

Hermosa Beach resident Sean Kelly, 44, and Palos Verdes residents Chuck Chambers, 58, and Russell Urban, 63, died in a plane crash on Nov. 21. The three were flying back from Baja Mexico after a week of surfing, when they ran out of gas while approaching John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

South Bay State Sen. Jenny Oropeza passed away Oct. 20 at age 53, after a long battle against cancer. Oropeza was instrumental in the passage of health legislation that addressed smoking prevention and breast cancer treatment.

Manhattan Beach Police Officer Jeff Goodrich died on Sept. 30 after a 20-month battle with brain cancer. He was 41.

For over 50 years Gordon Evans sculpted and painted in the studio behind the Valley Park Drive home that he and his wife Betty purchased shortly after World War II. Evans died March 20, following a short illness. He was 83.

Linda King was recalled as a fine craftswoman and a helpful friend to artists, after she perished in a fire at her Hermosa Beach framing store and gallery on May 14. She was 68.

Les Paul Robley, a long time movie critic for Easy Reader, passed away of natural causes on May 6, at age 65.

After living in Manhattan Beach from 1953-1989, Florencio Vincente “Socko” Torres died at his San Pedro home on Tuesday, March 30. Torres, 80, was one of the greatest athletes to attend Redondo Union High School and was an avid supporter of the school’s athletic program until the time of his death. Torres quarterbacked the Sea Hawk football team and also earned four letters in baseball and track and field in the mid-40’s.

Mira Costa student Darius Smith, 17, died March 10. He had transferred during the last school year from Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance to Mira Costa, where he was involved in the drama program and the Improv Club.

Construction worker Alejandro Valladares, 29, died March 10 after falling into a trench that collapsed around him on site at Cypress Avenue and Sixth Street in Hermosa Beach.

Julia Tedesco, local artist and former president of the Manhattan Beach Historical Society, died March 1 after a six-month battle with leukemia. She was 58.

Popular portrait and scenic photographer Mary Pat Dorr of Manhattan Beach died on Feb. 18 after a two-decade-long battle with breast cancer. She was 70.

Redondo Union High School Alumnus and longtime El Segundo High School baseball coach John Stevenson suffered a heart attack and died Jan. 11 at the age of 76. In March 2007, Stevenson became only the seventh high school coach in the nation — and the first in California — to win 1,000 games. Stevenson-led teams won 1,059 games and lost only 419 during his 50-year coaching career.

Michael Nolin, 24, and Danielle Hagbery, 22, were both found dead on Jan. 10 in Nolin’s mom’s sand section home. Police believed that a romantic break-up led to Nolin shooting and killing Hagbery before turning the gun on himself.

Rodney “Blue” Fox, a longtime doorman at La Paz, Shellback, and Ercoles and fixture on the Manhattan Beach bar scene passed away on January 7.

Matt Varon, grandson of Morgan Jewelers founder Morgan Varon, died in his Manhattan Beach home on Jan. 6, while home from college for winter break. He was found unconscious on the couch by his father and later pronounced dead. At that time, police were unsure of the cause of death. He was 21.

2009

Gary James Prejeant, 54, died of natural causes June 18. “Farmer,” as he was known by fellow surfers, was born Dec. 14, 1954 in Gardena and began surfing when he was 10 years old.

Little Killer, a Chihuahua-min-pin mix, who wore sunglasses and hat, was a popular downtown Hermosa fixture. Little Killer was trained to dial 911 if his master Joe Martinez, a disabled former truck driver, had trouble breathing through his tracheotomy tube. On Dec. 12, as Joe was maneuvering his wheelchair in a crosswalk on his way to get a cup of coffee, a car grazed his chair and tipped him onto the street. Four-year-old Killer fell under the car’s tires and was killed instantly.

RBPD K-9 Valor, winner of the 2009 K-9 World Championships with RBPD officer Ken Greenleaf, died of complications from kidney failure on Dec. 2, 2009.

Former South Bay political leader Bob Beverly Sr. passed away Oct. 14 at his Manhattan Beach home, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The former Manhattan Beach mayor went on to serve in both the California State Assembly and Senate. Appreciatively known as “The Last Moderate” by colleagues on both sides of the legislative aisle, he authored 427 California laws. Beverly is credited saving the Manhattan Beach pier, which had been slated for demolition in the early 1990s.

George Rusher, a longtime Redondo Beach resident who founded Rusher Air Conditioning, died Oct. 5 of natural causes. He was 95.

Wilden Gimenez, the popular owner of Summer’s Sports Bar in Manhattan Beach for the past two decades, passed away September 30, 2008 morning after a long battle with heart disease.

Hermosa patriarch Bill Schneider, a co-founder of the Seawright Volleyball Tournament, and a 67-year Hermosa resident, passed away at home Tuesday, Sept. 22, surrounded by his family. He was 94.

James Patrick Aiken, a former LAPD officer who had lived homeless in Hermosa for the last year and-a-half of his life, expired quietly on September 15, 2009 on one of the Pier Plaza benches he used to frequent. He was 56.

Dexter Lima, 17, was swimming just south of the Manhattan Beach pier with a family member around 5:50 p.m. on July 27 when a powerful wave pulled them both under. Lima was not breathing and without a pulse when he was brought to shore.

Longtime Hermosa Beach resident Robert Eugene Graham, who owned Robert Graham’s Hermosa Flower Shop with his wife Martha at 1901 Pacific Coast Highway from 1954 until 1962, passed away Aug. 31.

Garrison Albert Frost, longtime owner of Coast Drug Store in downtown Hermosa, died from complications of heart disease at age 73 in July.

Dexter Lima, 17, of Torrance, was swimming just south of the Manhattan Beach pier on July 26 and he was pulled underwater by abnormally high surf. A lifeguard diver from a Redondo Beach Baywatch rescue boat found Lima under 10 feet of water. He was not breathing and without a pulse when he was brought to shore. Lima died the next day.

Maurice Beaudet, who opened Hermosa’s iconic vegetarian restaurant The Spot in 1981 with then-wife Tonya Beaudet, died peacefully at home on May 24 at age 61, after battling a mysterious wasting illness.

Kelly Hales died from gunshot wounds on April 16, after being shot by a pharmacy technician at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where Kelly had worked for 21 years. He was responding to a call for help from another employee who had been shot. The longtime Redondo Beach resident would have turned 57 the week he died.

Former Mira Costa baseball player Henry Nigel Pearson, 25, was killed April 9 when the car he was a passenger in was broadsided by a drunk driver. The accident also claimed the lives of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and Cal State Fullerton student Courtney Stewart. Jon Wilhite, 24, a teammate of Pearson’s at Mira Costa was the lone survivor of the crash.

Hermosa punk rock guitarist Kristian Dragge, a veteran of the Smut Peddlers, died April 5. He was 39.

Lifelong South Bay resident Gloria Kolesar passed away March 2009. She was 63.

Cori Desmond, 28, a popular bartender at Beaches in Manhattan Beach, disappeared Feb. 15. Her body was found on Highway 330, outside Running Springs the following day. Tony Perez, 35, of Redondo was charged with her murder.

Redondo building inspector George Velasco died in late January, at age 39, from colon cancer.

2008

Longtime Hermosa Beach resident Katie LaVerne Grannis, wife of pioneer surfer and surf photographer LeRoy Frank Grannis, died Dec. 3 at her home in Carlsbad. She was 89.

Katie Huston, 35, died after jumping from the second floor terrace of a Manhattan Beach apartment building on October 16.

Former two-term Redondo Beach District 5 councilwoman Marilyn White passed away Oct. 7 after a long battle with cancer. She was 79.

Joe Diaz, a Kiwanis stalwart and Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year, who launched the 35-year-old student exchange program with Loreto, Mexico, passed away at age 95 on October 4.

Don Siverts passed away Sept. 18, from cancer. He was 78. Siverts was an illustrator, diver, underwater photographer, inventor, adventurer, treasure hunter, husband, father, and grandfather.

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Dave Eisenstadt, who covered Manhattan Beach for Easy Reader and later The Beach Reporter, died in a traffic collision Aug. 26 in Lancaster, Calif. He was 46.

Dallas Yost, a longtime Hermosa businessman, Kiwanis member, tireless civic volunteer and Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year, passed away at age 76 on August 4.

Molly Kate Lamers-Wolfgang’s, the 34-year-old Manhattan Beach mother of two young children died after crashing through a guardrail on Highway 18 while driving alone to her family’s Lake Arrowhead vacation home on August. 4.

William E. “Uncle Bill” Vacek, longtime owner of the rough-and-ready, nautical-themed Poop Deck bar on The Strand, died July 5, just days after he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He was 77.

Jimmy “The Greek” Hantzarides, 54, owner Old Venice restaurant in downtown Manhattan Beach, was hit by an auto while bicycling on July 1, 2008. He died three days later as a result of the injuries from the accident.

Cody Williamson, 16, died April 9, 2008 after being hit by a motorcyclist while on a pizza run with friends in his North Redondo neighborhood.

Over 150 past students, co-workers and friends formed a memorial circle on the sand to bid farewell to Alfred Freeman Adams, who served as the Manhattan Beach School District’s music director from 1988 to 2003. He is credited with reviving the district’s music program. Adams died of natural causes at 66-years-old in his Redondo Beach home on April 16.

In the jazz world, Ozzie Cadena was a legend. In Hermosa Beach, he was the guy who hustled jobs for musician friends and picked up day old food from markets for local churches to distribute to the homeless. No task was too menial, no thanks were necessary. Cadena died April 9 at age 83 as a result of a stroke he suffered last year.

Longtime Hermosa Beach resident Charlotte Cross died March 7 following a brief illness. She was 74. During her six decades in Hermosa she served as the city’s animal control officer, owned the children’s boutique Charlotte’s Web, worked as a typesetter for Easy Reader,  and worked with the Hermosa Historical Society.

Redondo Beach resident Brittany Reed, 17, was diagnosed with leukemia in March 2007 and passed away January 3.

2007

Weldon “Gibby” Gibson, a key figure in the resurrection of paddleboarding, died from non-smoking-related lung cancer complications on Aug. 9 at the age of 69. The 65-year Manhattan Beach resident was a South Bay lifeguard for 33 years and owned Gibson and Co. insurance in Torrance.

Quentin L. “Boots” Thelen, a former councilman and owner of the Mermaid restaurant, as well as neighboring blocks of Pier Avenue and The Strand, died July 24 of cancer. He was 85. As a councilman from 1964 to 1972, Thelen was a driving force in placing median islands in Hermosa Avenue and lower Pier Avenue, and establishing city parking lots.

Former Redondo Beach city manager Lou Garcia died unexpectedly amid the myriad books of his Broadway Street condominium sometime during the weekend of July 14, 2007 from what appears to have been a massive heart attack. He was 65.

Margaret Parker, a Hermosa resident for more than 70 years, and widow of the Rev. Dr. Richard Parker, the longtime rector of St. Cross Episcopal Church, died at her home on July 11. She was 93.

Joan Dontanville, who became Manhattan Beach’s first elected councilmember and who served as Manhattan Beach mayor in 1975, died in her home at the age of 76 in February.

2006

Hermosa Beach native Anthony Brian Campbell died Nov. 22, in a car accident while headed to his cabin in Wallowa County.

Doreen Hudson, born in Liverpool, England, on Sept. 29, 1928, passed away on Nov. 26 at her Hermosa Beach home.

Peter Mangurian, a physician and the longtime owner of downtown Hermosa Beach property, including Scotty’s on the Strand restaurant, died at age 79 of complications from a stroke September 18.

Three-term Hermosa Beach councilman and retired college history professor Jack Belasco died September 10 at age 88. Under Belasco’s leadership in the early 1960s, Hermosa adopted a general plan that reduced potential development and population growth, built new stations for police and fire, purchased the Biltmore Hotel property, financed construction of a new library, adopted the city manager form of government and built a new city pier.

Roger Creighton, a colorful and controversial Hermosa Beach councilman in the 1980s, had been battling prostate cancer and passed away inside the Hermosa home he grew up in August 2006. He was 68.

Longtime Hermosa Beach civic activist and former Easy Reader production manager Coralie Ebey died Aug. 8 at age 77. Ebey and fellow members of the Swedish Mafia fought relentlessly and selflessly for over two decades to protect Hermosa’s small town, family oriented character and unspoiled beaches.

The ashes of Dive N’ Surf co-owner Bill Meistrell were scattered during a paddleout off  Redondo Beach attended by watermen and waterwomen from around the world. He died July 25 at age 78 from Parkinson’s. Bill and his twin  brother Bob are widely credited with inventing the popular wetsuit, which made year around ocean sports possible. The twins were co-Surfing Hall of Famers, co-Diving Hall of Famers, co-surf industry Lifetime Achievement Award recipients.

Dr. David Schumacher, one of Hermosa’s largest, most popular residential landlords whose family name is enshrined at the base of the city pier, died Wednesday, July 25 at age 86, after a long battle with heart related illnesses.

Former Mira Costa football player Devin Adair, 21, died from a staph infection on April 23. Adair received a football scholarship to Tulsa University after earning All-Mission Conference and All-State honors in 2005 while playing for El Camino. He died in St. Francis hospital with his parents at his side.

Hisako “Sako” Ruth Miho, a founding member of the Hermosa Beach Garden Club, passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 3. She was 92.

Family and friends of Blaise O’Reilly filled St. Lawrence Church in Redondo Beach to celebrate the life of Blaise O’Reilly. The 26-year-old Redondo Beach native died in a traffic accident on April 1.

2005

Betty Evans, the Hermosa Beach author of nearly a dozen cookbooks and an Easy Reader staff writer for nearly three decades, died Dec. 13 of cancer.  She was 78. Evans was named the Hermosa Beach Woman of the Year in 1981 for her wide range of community activities, including work with the Hermosa Garden Club and the Friends of the Library.

Thomas Marcellino, a former chair of the South Bay Surfrider Foundation, died Dec. 1 while surfing at 26th St. in Manhattan Beach. Marcellino had surfed for 45 years and was still an active member of the Surfrider Foundation.

Long time South Bay resident Helen Radl passed away at her home on November 6. She had lived in the same house on 21st St. in Manhattan Beach for 40 years. She was 92 years old.

RBPD K-9 Basko died Nov. 2 of a heart attack during a training exercise when a cache of cocaine in what supposed to be in a puncture-proof pouch burst in Basko’s mouth. Working with Officer Ken Greenleaf, he made his first bust when he was only 10 months old, apprehending a murder suspect on his very first week on the job. In the following four years he excelled both at police work on the street and in K-9 competitions.  A memorial ceremony in front of the police station was attended by hundreds of people.

John Thompson Hales, amateur historian of Hermosa who designed the official city seal and participated in 27 straight Manhattan Beach Hometown 10K races, died of complications from prostate cancer at age 88 September 24.

Former Mira Costa High School English teacher and 2000 National Teacher of the Year Marilyn Whirry died on September 2 , after a 10-year battle with breast cancer.  She was 72.

Manhattan Beach Middle School student Jared Wilson, 13, died in a tractor accident on his grandparent’s farm in Texas on July 27.

Tom Enterkin, 75, and his wife Ginger, 60, died in a plane crash in Utah on July 24 when their small plane suddenly lost altitude and cartwheeled off airport property through a fence.

Manhattan Beach residents Paul Kells, 53, and his son Connor , 9, along with former Manhattan Beach residents Cindy Ruetz, 42, and her sons Jack, 8, and Justin, 9, died in a hydroplane accident off the coast of Costa Rica on July 17.

South Bay Assemblyman Mike Gordon passed away in June from complications related to a brain tumor. The popular Democrat had been Mayor of El Segundo.

Charlie Saikley, the ‘Godfather of beach volleyball,’ died from multiple myeloma on June 17 at the age of 69. During his 42 years as an employee of the city of Manhattan Beach, Saikley was known worldwide for organizing volleyball tournaments, including the 6-Man Surf Festival Volleyball Tournament and the Manhattan Open Volleyball Tournament.

Susan Ellis, a 64-year-old Manhattan Beach resident, died on April 30 from injuries sustained when she was struck by a bicyclist while walking across the bike path.

Libia Cabrera, 39, of Lawndale was found dead on April 11 in the Manhattan Beach home in which she worked as a housekeeper. The house — in which she was handcuffed and gagged — was destroyed by a fire and her death ruled a homicide.

Libia Cabrera, 39, of Lawndale was found dead on April 11 in the Manhattan Beach home in which she worked as a housekeeper. The house — in which she was handcuffed and gagged — was destroyed by a fire and her death ruled a homicide.

Over 100 surfers joined hands in a circle in the water off of 8th St. in Hermosa Beach in April to say aloha to longtime Hermosa surfboard maker Wayne Miyata. The Hawaiian native died March 21 at age 63 of lung cancer. Miyata was featured in the classic surf film “Endless Summer” and was known for his big wave riding and expertise in the now nearly lost art of color glossing and pin striping surfboards.

2004

Fr. Ignatius “Iggy” M. Hinkle died Dec. 1, following a brief illness. He was 71. the Franciscan priest was a popular teacher at Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance and pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Hermosa beach for 13

Seven-year-old Jessica Ogley, a congregation member of Hermosa’s Beach Cities Christian Fellowship, whose battle against cancer included a novel treatment at a nuclear fission reactor in Japan, passed away at her home October 21.

Former Los Angeles County Lifeguard and Mira Costa graduate (’87) Jimmy Miller was at the inspirational core of South Bay surfing. He died August 7 following a battle with mental illness.

Lee William Aukerman, an aerospace scientist, avid outdoorsman and active Unitarian, passed away in May. He was 80.

Manhattan Beach resident Brian S. Mulgrew, a U.S. Navy veteran with a passion for his work and a love of reading, passed away May after suffering a heart attack. He was 53.

2002

Jack I. Wood, an engineer and Hermosa councilman in the early 1980s, died of a heart attack April 19, at age 58, after pulling off the freeway in northern San Diego County.

Former Redondo Beach City Councilman Ron Cawdrey passed away March 28, after a long battle with cancer. Cawdrey was one of the most civically involved citizens in the history of Redondo Beach, an appreciation of which earned him several honors, including the very first Mayor’s Community Service Award earlier this year, and the RB Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year in 1992.

2001

Pat Gazin, Hermosa Beach historian and the city’s first elected female councilmember, died Feb. 27 from diabetes-related complications. She was elected to the city council in 1959 and was a founding member of the Hermosa Beach Historical Society.

Harold Schumaker, 26-year owner of Hermosa Cyclery died January 28, at age 60 after he was hospitalized with an infection associated with a heart valve replacement. ER

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