Search for Missing Kayaker Is Called Off

Crews from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Orange County Harbor Patrol called off their air-and-sea search Friday night for missing Dana Point kayaker Claudia Mathieu, whom they believe might have been blown out to sea as the Santa Ana windstorm kicked up Wednesday morning.

“It would definitely push her out,” said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Dan Larson, adding that the winds also could have changed coastal currents.

Weather reports put wind speeds at 20 mph from the northeast at mid-morning Wednesday, but the gusts quickly grew stronger, reaching 70 mph as they moved down the Santa Ana Mountain canyons and then roaring over the coastal lowlands before heading out to sea.

Larson said a small-craft advisory was in effect at the time that Mathieu, who was kayaking alone, is believed to have disappeared from her usual route along Doheny State Beach and Dana Point Harbor. He said Mathieu was wearing a blue jacket; the kayak is gray with a black seat attached to the top.

The Coast Guard began an air search Thursday afternoon, keeping helicopters in the air until midnight. The search resumed Friday morning and included a C-130 plane, which can stay aloft longer than a helicopter.

The search area stretched from Dana Point to Catalina Island, measuring about 40 miles by 25 miles, Larson said. Searchers, who dropped floats in the 64-degree water to determine currents, called off their efforts for good at 5:16 p.m. Friday, and had no plans to resume Saturday, another Coast Guard spokesman said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer John Howk said boats and aircraft had scoured 1,200 square miles.

“We’d basically searched the whole area where we thought she’d be, and found nothing at all,” Howk said. The search will resume only if they receive additional information about where she might be, he said.

For Mathieu’s friends and relatives, it’s been an arduous wait.

“I’m trying to stay here by the phone, but there’s not a lot to do,” said Susan Mathieu of San Clemente, the missing woman’s sister-in-law. “You just feel like you want to be on a boat. You want to be doing something.”

She said the family is considering searching on their own with hired boats and planes if the Coast Guard doesn’t resume its search.

Mathieu was discovered missing early Thursday by her friend and usual kayaking partner, Gary Lillge. Friday morning, he found himself preoccupied with thoughts of Mathieu, which eventually turned to her dog, a 2-year-old German shepherd named Layla that Mathieu adores. Lillge realized that the dog wouldn’t be getting much exercise holed up at Dana Niguel Veterinary Hospital, where Mathieu, 37, works as a dog groomer.

So Lillge decided to take Layla for a run at Doheny State Beach, close to where the hospital is on Pacific Coast Highway. He parked, he said, near the spot where he found the dog Thursday morning, locked up in the back of Mathieu’s Toyota.

“I just wanted to go down there where we used to kayak and let [Layla] sniff around,” Lillge said.

Mathieu is a native of the Chicago area, one of eight children. Two of her brothers--Tom, Susan Mathieu’s husband, and Richard Mathieu--also live in Orange County and were trying to maintain some sense of normalcy while the search continued, the sister-in-law said.

Co-workers at Dana Niguel Veterinary Hospital were similarly subdued, said hospital administrator John Thompson. Mathieu worked there for about eight months, in charge of kennels and bathing, after working about four years as a cashier at Crown Hardware on Irvine Avenue in Newport Beach, where Lillge is manager.

Susan Mathieu speculated that the missing woman might not have been fully aware of the dangers of the sea.

“She didn’t grow up on the water,” she said. “I guess she didn’t have a healthy respect for the water. Or fear of it.”

Lillge described Mathieu as an “experienced recreational” kayaker but said she was not familiar with rough water.

He said Mathieu told him Tuesday night that she planned to do some kayaking on her day off. He said he tried to reach her by phone Wednesday night to see how the day went, but she didn’t answer. By 5:30 a.m. Thursday, he began calling other friends and relatives.

At daybreak he went to her apartment, and finding it empty went to their usual kayaking spot at Doheny and found her car.

“That’s the thing that really hit hard,” Lillge said. “When I found the car, I was worried. But when I opened the back door and the dog was there. . . . That dog was her life. She wouldn’t have left her.”

Times staff writer Steve Carney contributed to this report.