South Laguna : Still No Sign Found of Cellist Feared Drowned

Authorities said Thursday that there is still no sign of Gregory Donnell Smithe, 25, a UC Irvine graduate student and cellist believed drowned off South Laguna while surf fishing last weekend.

Lifeguards and Sheriff’s Department deputies, who had searched for Smithe in the waters off West Beach, said the classical musician’s body has not washed ashore.

Smithe, who was the principal cellist with the UC Irvine chamber and symphony orchestras as he worked toward obtaining his master’s degree in music from the university, was presumed drowned. But an investigation into his disappearance late last Friday afternoon is continuing, according to Sheriff’s Lt. George Johnson.

Smithe had been fishing on shore with a friend, Ben Pham, a classical guitarist. Pham told Smithe’s cello professor, Stephen Erdody, that he left the beach at about 6 p.m. to retrieve a wallet from a car on the bluff. When he returned 20 minutes later, Pham said, his friend was gone and only Pham’s fishing pole, Smithe’s tackle box and watch were on the sand.

A witness later told deputies that he saw a fisherman matching Smithe’s description waist-high in the surf, casting into the waves.

Deputies in Harbor Patrol boats and a helicopter searched the waters for four hours Friday night, and lifeguards in skin-diving gear combed the ocean floor the next morning, but they found no trace of Smithe.