Hit-and-Run Victim Mourned

Elisabeth Stock didn’t have big plans for her 65th birthday. Maybe dinner with her only son. Someplace casual and understated, like her. Someplace where her trademark Birkenstock sandals would fit right in.

But first the Laguna Beach woman needed to run an errand. A mystery novel she’d checked out from the library was due back before closing time, and--prompt as she always was--the widow set out to return it.

She walked, because she’d quit driving years ago. The traffic had become too much for her, especially during the summer months, when Coast Highway and downtown Laguna brimmed with cars moving in every direction. Finally, Stock turned her car over to her son.

“Good riddance,” her friends recall her saying at the time. It was physically safer--not to mention mentally healthier--to walk, she’d said. Happily, she hoofed it everywhere--to the bank, the store, the lawn-bowling center just north of town in Heisler Park, where she was a popular member.

“I can’t stop thinking about that,” said Jean Kaye, who befriended Stock on the green bowling lawns perched on a cliff and blessed with impressive views of the Pacific Ocean. “She always said she didn’t realize how much she’d been missing cooped up in a car all those years. She said she should have given up driving ages ago. She thought for sure she’d found the secret to a longer life.”

But Stock was hit and killed in a crosswalk less than two blocks from her condominium Tuesday by an unidentified driver who didn’t stop--and hardly slowed--at the scene. Police said the light-colored Ford Ranger pickup was heading east on Cliff Drive near Rosa Bonheur Drive at the time of the 6 p.m. crash, which threw Stock some 40 feet away from the corner.

“The driver was definitely going too fast for that area, although we’re not 100% sure what the speed was,” said Laguna Beach Police Chief Jim Spreine. “That’s a residential area, even though it’s a well-traveled residential area, and the impact was just too severe for us not to conclude he or she was speeding.”

Pedestrian fatalities are relatively rare in Laguna Beach, Spreine said, particularly on the city’s residential streets. Nearly all of the half-dozen such accidents since 1994 have occurred along Coast Highway or other major canyon roads, he said. Of those, two were felony hit-and-run crimes. In the same period countywide, about 238 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles.

“Our numbers are low, thankfully,” Spreine said, “especially for our size. These are sad, frustrating cases to work.”

Officers returned to the scene Wednesday evening and passed out fliers with information about the accident. They arrived shortly before 6 p.m. on the off chance that the driver travels that route regularly at that time of day, Spreine said. No arrests had been made late Wednesday.

Investigators also were scouring auto-body repair shops and the registration records for all Ford Rangers in the county. The truck had damage to the right front end, and a piece of headlight was left at the scene, which will help police pinpoint its model year. Stock’s clothing is also being examined for flecks of paint or other clues, Spreine said.

“We’re doing everything we can to find the person responsible for such a sad and terrible tragedy,” he said. “This is not something we’re going to give up on.”

Meanwhile, a small group of Stock’s friends spent hours Wednesday recalling the quiet woman from Austria whose accent charmed them all. She was known for her gentle sense of humor and “lovely laugh,” they said. At the Laguna Beach Garden Club, she was an active member who loved comparing notes and designing landscapes. And at the city’s lawn-bowling center, Stock was a regular in crisp whites who walked away with more than a few tournament trophies.

“She didn’t have the faintest idea what this game was all about when she first came here” six years ago, Kaye said. “I helped show her the ropes, and pretty soon she was out here every day. She was hooked.”

Stock also was active at the city’s senior center and volunteered one day a week at a nearby nursing home. Her love of animals--especially dogs--somehow took on a life of its own, and Stock was always busy dog-sitting for people who’d heard of her.

Still, few people knew much more about her than that, said neighbor Kay Courtney, who lives below the condo Stock shared with her son. She was friendly and kind, and she kept a meticulous home. But with the exception of her son, she was alone. Her relatives and in-laws live in Europe, and her son, Chris Stock, 31, had been between jobs and was staying at the complex only temporarily.

He left Wednesday morning to visit friends in Arizona, after telling Courtney and others that he needed to get away. He plans to start making funeral arrangements, with the help of his mother’s friends, when he returns, she said.

“The whole thing is just so terrible,” said Courtney, a fellow garden club member. “Everybody’s always in such a hurry to get somewhere these days. But look what the cost can be for that. Is it worth it?”

Staff writer Ray F. Herndon contributed to this report.