Orange Wife Weeps for Mate Held in Indonesia

More than a week after her husband was detained by Indonesian authorities for allegedly entering restricted Indonesian waters, Debi Commerford still cries and prays that he will be home by Easter.

“I am trying to be a heroine about it, but it’s hard,” said Commerford, who lives in Orange. “I still have fits of crying but I keep going.”

Danny Commerford, 38, a building inspector, was with five other Californians and three Australians on a scuba-diving vacation in the waters off the island of Sumatra on March 22 when Indonesian authorities boarded their boat, said Ruth van Heuven, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Consul Affairs in Washington.

Indonesian authorities suspect that the crew was searching for valuables from a Dutch ship that sank more than 200 years ago, Van Heuven said. The sophisticated sonar equipment on the boat added to the suspicions, she said.

The authorities also allege that the vessel entered restricted waters. The party, which chartered the boat and several Indonesian crewmen in Singapore, is being held on the vessel until the investigation is completed.

“As of yet there have been no formal charges” filed against the divers, Van Heuven said. “So there has been no talk of any punishment.”

One of the crew members, Cliff Craft, 43, a building inspector from Whittier, faces charges in Ventura County of pillaging an underwater wreck in the waters off Channel Islands National Park, said Allan Gordon, a deputy district attorney in Ventura County.

In November, 1987, Craft and 14 other divers, most of whom are members of the California Wreck Divers Club, were charged with 24 counts of using hacksaws and hammers to steal pieces of the wrecked Winfield Scott, a wooden-hulled steamship that sank 135 years ago off Anacapa Island. All were charged with disturbing archeological artifacts from a designated ecological reserve, a misdemeanor.

Others Charged

Ten members of the diving team were also charged with willfully defacing an object of historical interest, also a misdemeanor, which carries penalties of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. An arraignment is scheduled for April 11, Gordon said.

Commerford, 28, said her husband, who has been scuba diving for about four years, and Craft were “there to start a building-inspecting business (in Singapore) and to do some scuba diving and that is all,” she said.

Others from California have been identified as Patrick Gibson, 47, a systems analyst from Van Nuys, and Jim Vorus of Santa Monica and Bob and Bruce Lanhan from Pleasant Hill, whose ages and occupations were not available. All were described as members of the California Wreck Divers club.

Australian crew members joined the expedition in Singapore, Cliff Craft’s wife, Jennifer, said. The Indonesian crew was hired when the boat was chartered last month.

Jennifer Craft, 33, said her husband called from the boat on March 25.

“He said they were about to start scuba diving when they were stopped and detained by Indonesian authorities,” she said. “Right now, they (Indonesian authorities) are basically trying to investigate to see if they had violated any laws.”

Jennifer Craft, however, refused to discuss the activities of the California Wreck Divers club or the significance of its name.

The group’s boat was stopped by an Indonesian naval patrol vessel about 20 miles off the island of Sumatra and was taken to the naval base in Tanjun Pinang, Sumatra, Van Heuven said.

She said the U.S. Bureau of Consul Affairs is making sure that the men receive food, water and legal council. The crew is in “good health” and has contacted U.S. authorities in Medan, an Indonesian city northwest of Singapore, she added.

Jennifer Craft said U.S. officials have told her that Indonesia will not hold a person for more than 20 days without formal charges.

‘Lives at Standstill’

In the meantime, however, “our lives are at a standstill,” said Craft, who has kept in touch with Embassy officials and informed the other wives. “We all live hooked to our phones. Believe it or not, I sleep by my phone.”

Lotti Wilson, Debi Commerford’s sister, said she has asked Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) for help. Bob Hudson, a spokesman for Wilson, said U.S. officials can only make sure that American citizens held abroad “are being treated fairly under the laws of that nation.”

“It is kind of hard for the families to understand that the United States has only so much influence in other sovereign countries,” Hudson said.

Meanwhile, the families of the group wait for news.

“When we first heard, we didn’t know what (would happen to them),” Craft said. “We expected everything from torture to who knows what.”

Debi Commerford, who has been married to Danny for less than a year, said she has had to take over her husband’s business while raising two children from his former marriage.

“I am left with all this responsibility,” she said. “And it’s hard, but I have to try and keep a positive attitude about it.”