Victim Hoped to Be Commercial Pilot

Flying had always been the dream of the 25-year-old Portola Hills pilot of an airplane that crashed Sunday morning in the Lucerne Valley, killing her and her parents and fiance, and she had hoped eventually to earn a commercial pilot’s license, a family friend said Monday.

In fact, Cynthia Kariolich met her fiance, Stefan Meister, at an aviation school in Prescott, Ariz., said Gloria Gryzik, a family friend in Des Plaines, Ill.

Meister, 25, was also of Portola Hills.

The four-seat Piper Aztec that Kariolich was flying went down in a dry lake bed and erupted in a ball of fire about 15 miles southeast of Victorville in San Bernardino County, authorities said.

Kariolich’s parents were Lewis and Anitma Kariolich, both of Des Plaines, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Andy Avery said.

The plane, which left Las Vegas Sunday morning bound for Orange County, was registered to Command Aviation, a flight school based at John Wayne Airport.

“The aircraft, a Piper Aztec, did come from Command Aviation, and [Cynthia Kariolich] was employed as a flight instructor here,” a company spokesman said. He declined to comment further.

A witness told authorities that the plane went into a tailspin and then crashed. But the cause of the accident, which occurred in turbulent weather, was not immediately known, Avery said. In addition to rain, “we did have high winds,” he said.

A National Transportation Safety Board official arrived at the crash site Monday to begin an investigation.

Family friends said that Cynthia Kariolich and Meister expected to be married in October. Both were aviation buffs.

“Cynthia was working as a flight instructor because she needed a lot of hours to qualify as a commercial pilot,” Gryzik said. “My daughter grew up with Cynthia, and they were best of friends. We’ve been good friends and neighbors since 1972. I took care of Cynthia since she was a baby.”

Kariolich’s parents were visiting their daughter for the holidays and had expected to return to Illinois on Christmas Day, Gryzik said.

Lewis Kariolich was employed by an Illinois telephone company in computer operations. Anitma Kariolich recently retired from a printing company.

Lewis Kariolich had taken private flight instructions and wanted to become a pilot. However, he had to give up that goal because of a heart condition that kept him from passing the required physical examination, Gryzik said.

“I think Cynthia was probably living his dream,” she said. “I think that’s what he would have wanted to have been, a pilot. But he never got to do it.”

Gryzik’s daughter, Sharon, 26, said that every Christmas she would buy her friend an ornament, usually with an aviation theme.

“It’s just something that I’ve always done,” Sharon Gryzik said. “And each year, she loved whatever I got her. She would marvel and say, ‘How could you find these things! I always look and never can find them.’ ”

In the aftermath of Sunday’s tragedy, Sharon Gryzik said, she opened the gift she had intended for her friend: a tiny, carefully crafted metal airplane in red and green. Then she hung it on her own Christmas tree in Illinois.

“We put the ornament on the tree near baby Jesus,” Gloria Gryzik said.