O.C. priest, friend are found dead

An Orange County priest and his female traveling companion were found dead in their car Sunday, apparently victims of a car accident in a remote Oregon logging area near where they had disappeared more than three weeks ago.

David Schwartz, 52, and Cheryl Gibbs, 61, appeared to have died after the priest’s 2005 Toyota Corolla ran off the road and down a 15- to 20-foot embankment on Highway 26, about 60 miles west of Portland, said Deputy Don Taylor, a spokesman for the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, which conducted the search.

“They probably died instantly in the car wreck,” Taylor said. “There were no skid marks and no indication of their being intoxicated. Our best guess is that they probably fell asleep.”

The wreckage had not been seen earlier because it was covered by brush, he said.

Schwartz, a Jesuit priest and director of the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, and Gibbs, a longtime friend and traveling companion who supervised death investigations for the Alameda County coroner’s office and lived in the Oakland suburb of Union City, had gone missing last month on the final leg of a monthlong tour through Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California.

It was to have ended with a visit to Schwartz’s niece in Carpinteria on the one-year anniversary of her wedding, at which Schwartz had officiated.

Relatives sounded the alarm, however, when the pair failed to show up for an expected reunion with the priest’s mother in Sacramento on June 16.

On Friday, Taylor said, Schwartz’s sister, searching for the pair along their announced route in Oregon, found Gibbs’ signature in the guest book at the Tillamook Cheese factory, on U.S. 101 about 75 miles west of Portland. The entry was dated June 8, one day after they had left most of their possessions in a two-bedroom hotel suite in the city to go sightseeing.

On Saturday, authorities said, a cafe owner in Wheeler, Ore., contacted them to report that the two had stopped for coffee there shortly after leaving the cheese factory.

She said they had asked for directions back to Portland, where they said they planned to pick up their belongings before proceeding to Bend.

And the same day, Taylor said, a deputy located a local winery where the two had stopped after leaving the cafe and bought two bottles of wine. “They each paid for their own,” he said. “The woman [at the winery] didn’t see which way they went.”

About 2:15 p.m. Sunday the pilot of a Civil Air Patrol plane, working with about 75 searchers on the ground, spotted the Toyota, hidden by heavy brush and large trees, at the bottom of an embankment along a remote stretch of highway.

“There are all kinds of logging roads out there,” Taylor said. “We had our people on the ground, driving and walking along windy roads with steep sides in the backwoods.”

Schwartz, born in Sacramento and ordained in 1985, spent most of his career as a hospital chaplain in San Francisco and Honolulu and was also an associate pastor in Santa Barbara and San Jose.

Most recently a resident of Garden Grove, he joined the Loyola Institute, which plans religious retreats, in 2000.

Family members said the two, who shared a love of the outdoors and often traveled together, had met about 20 years ago while Schwartz was working as a community organizer in Oakland.

“They just clicked,” the priest’s sister, Rosemary Mulligan of Sacramento, said last month after learning that the pair were missing.

“She didn’t have many people in her family.”

When they weren’t traveling the world together, she said, Gibbs sometimes joined Schwartz and his family on vacations.

Relatives Sunday said they were glad the ordeal was over.

“I’m saddened but relieved that we know what happened,” said Schwartz’s sister, Linda Petzold of Elk Grove, who found Gibbs’ signature at the cheese factory.

“It’s terrible not knowing what happened to a family member; your mind just thinks of all kinds of things, and every day you wake up and wonder what could have happened.”

Schwartz’s brother-in-law, Tom Mulligan, characterized discovering his body as miraculous. “We’re glad we found him,” he said. “Dave always told me he had at least half a dozen miracles happen to him. I was praying for a miracle, though not expecting it. This was a miracle in itself; God led us to him today.”

Taylor said that autopsies were planned.

david.haldane@latimes.com