At a Loss

One week after Claudia Mathieu was believed to have launched her gray kayak into the choppy waters of Dana Point Harbor and disappeared, relatives and friends of the 37-year-old were drawn back to the beach Wednesday, still unable to believe she was blown out to sea--unconvinced, even, that she would have paddled into the ocean on such a windy day.

It was a symbolic visit more than a search, although they scanned the beach for clues and asked strangers if they’d seen signs, anything at all, of Mathieu. Mostly they walked in silence, trying to picture her, alone in a blue jacket, toting her kayak to the water.

“I just feel like we should be here today,” said Susan Mathieu, the missing woman’s sister-in-law. “It’s been exactly a week. I don’t know. . . . It just felt like the thing to do.”

Susan Mathieu said she was surprised how busy the beach was Wednesday afternoon with people who claimed to be regulars. Many were aware that a kayaker was missing, yet none recalled seeing Claudia Mathieu last week.

She walked the beach with the missing woman’s colleagues, Judy Laberto and Marilyne Henry, who both worked with Claudia Mathieu at a nearby veterinary hospital. They traced the steps authorities believe their friend took from the parking lot to the shore.

They let her dog, a German shepherd named Layla that she adored, roam the beach, nose-to-sand. The day after Mathieu disappeared, the dog was found muzzled and in a cage inside the locked car--details that most alarm those who knew her.

“She wouldn’t have left that dog locked up like that,” Laberto said. “She wouldn’t have brought Layla with her just to leave her in the car for a few hours. There’s no way.”

“I’ve never seen Claudia muzzle that dog, not ever,” said Henry, Mathieu’s supervisor at the animal hospital.

At one point, the women brought Layla back to her owner’s car--the first time the pet had been near it in seven days.

The shepherd began bounding excitedly, standing up on her hind legs and sniffing about the hood and doors, and then hopped in and out of the car several times while Susan Mathieu and Laberto knelt nearby, calling out: “Where’s your mommy? Only you can tell us.”

Gary Lillge, Mathieu’s usual kayaking partner, said she told him that she planned to go out on the water Dec. 10--her day off from work. When she didn’t answer her telephone all night or the next morning, Lillge said he went to her apartment and found it empty. Then he said he went to their regular kayaking spot near Doheny State Park and found her car.

That Layla was inside “really hit me hard too,” Lillge said. “That dog was her life. She wouldn’t have left her.”

An air-and-sea search by the U.S. Coast Guard and Orange County Sheriff’s Department officials was called off after two days and Mathieu was presumed dead. Her boat has not been found and no one has reported seeing a kayaker that day.

On Dec. 9, the day before Mathieu disappeared, a 54-year-old Dana Point man was reported missing in an inflatable boat that authorities later found 10 miles offshore, Sheriff’s Sgt. Paul Falk said. The man left suicide notes with family members before taking to the water. His body has not been found.

Falk said in that case, bloodhounds were able to track the victim’s scent from the harbor docks to the waterline, a “solid indication” that he was on the boat.

When search teams combed the area just two days later for Mathieu, however, heavy winds with gusts of up to 40 mph had kicked up, preventing the dogs from establishing a trail, he said.

“The conditions changed so fast,” Falk said. “The day she went out there was a miserable, windy day that would have been churning up the water pretty good. It’s not surprising we found the first guy’s boat that far offshore.”

While authorities said it’s unusual that the kayak hasn’t turned up, they have not ruled out the possibility that it was blown farther out to sea. Wind speeds were at least 20 mph for 24 hours, fueled by wild gusts as they moved down the Santa Ana Mountain canyons and out to sea.

The gray coloring of Mathieu’s kayak could also make spotting it more difficult, they said. And if it did wash up somewhere, it could have been picked up by someone who didn’t report finding the craft.

“That’s a real possibility,” Sheriff’s Capt. Ron Wilkerson said. “It’s just impossible to say what happened out there.”

Mathieu’s friends and relatives, however, stubbornly refuse to believe she would have chosen to paddle in the water in such conditions. A small-craft advisory was in effect that day, something she would surely have known, they said.

“She had too much common sense for that,” Susan Mathieu said. “Just coming here and looking out there at the wind and stuff, I can’t imagine she’d go out.”

Standing on the beach Wednesday, Laberto said she couldn’t shake a “gnawing, gut feeling that something else happened” to Mathieu that day. A sheriff’s homicide detective has taken over the case, but Wilkerson said that is a routine assignment for missing person reports. There is no evidence of foul play, he said.

“She wasn’t depressed or sad, and she just got promoted at work,” Laberto said. “She was in good spirits and planned to stop by my house for Christmas.

“I just know in my heart she’s not out in that ocean. I can’t let go of that. I won’t.”