Two Found Alive, One Dead on Baja Fishing Excursion

A fisherman from the Riverside County community of Pedley and his Mexican guide, who had been missing for nearly two weeks after disappearing aboard a skiff in the Sea of Cortez, were found alive early Tuesday morning on the same deserted island whose shores they had been fishing.

The body of a third fisherman also was discovered.

Joseph Rangel, 50, and skiff captain Jose Luis Ramos Garcia of the Baja California port city of San Felipe, reportedly were discovered wandering on a small beach by divers targeting scallops at Isla Angel de la Guarda, a large land mass 20 miles from the small Baja town of Bahia de los Angeles, about 250 miles south of the border.

Rangel’s longtime friend and fishing companion, Lorenzo Madrid, 50, a drugstore manager from Malibu, perished at some point during an ordeal that apparently began on the evening of Oct. 4, when the three failed to return to their “mother ship,” which had been anchored in a protected bay at the north end of the island.

Isla Angel de la Guarda, 40 miles long and about 12 miles wide, had been the focal point of an extensive and prolonged search and it remains a mystery how the two were able to survive for so long without much food or water, and how they were able to go undetected for so long.

The search effort involved dozens of vessels and aircraft provided by the Mexican government and volunteers.

“We fly about six days, all along the Sonora [mainland] coast and Baja California coast, as well as at ‘Angel Island’ and [nearby] Tiburon Island, and we don’t see nobody or nothing,” said Eduardo Paralta, a volunteer pilot from Puerto Libertad on the mainland coast. “We had 20 little boats and even the big shrimpers looking and . . . nobody.”

The survivors and Madrid’s body were taken aboard the mother ship, the 87-foot Celia Angelina, and Tuesday evening were en route to Puertecitos, about 50 miles south of San Felipe.

The physical condition of the survivors was not immediately known, although San Felipe Port Captain Felipe Relancillo said both were in “very stable condition.”

This, of course, was welcome news to the Rangel family.

“How do I feel? I’m ecstatic,” Loretta Dolter, Rangel’s daughter, said Tuesday morning, shortly after receiving the news from the American Consulate in Tijuana.

Most people had given all three men up for dead and Dolter, 23, was preparing a letter to Rangel’s office at Interstate Electronics in Anaheim, saying that the family had accepted his death.

“I got the call right as I was writing the letter,” Dolter said.

Isla Angel de la Guarda, or Guardian Angel Island, is one of many deserted islands that pepper the remote “Midriff” region of the Sea of Cortez.

The Midriff, where warm currents from the south mix with colder currents from the north, is frequented mostly by scientists, commercial fishermen from local villages and by sport fishermen aboard mother ship-skiff operations based in San Felipe, about 125 miles to the north.

The area is extremely remote--there are only two working telephones in Bahia de los Angeles--and notorious for strong winds that come up unexpectedly.

Details of the discovery of the survivors and Madrid’s body remained sketchy Tuesday evening. There was one unconfirmed report that they were found on the Baja peninsula south of Bahia de los Angeles and another that they were found aboard the skiff 60 miles south of the island. The San Felipe Police Department, which is handling the investigation, declined to comment until it could contact the survivors.

The six-day trip that originated in San Felipe was nearing its end when the three failed to return to the mother ship after an afternoon of fishing the island’s shores aboard a 22-foot skiff.

During such angling adventures, passengers board their mother ships--mostly converted shrimp trawlers with bunks or small staterooms--in San Felipe and make a 15-hour run to the Midriff.

The mother ships anchor at various islands while the skiffs, carrying up to three anglers, venture out on morning and afternoon fishing trips. Some of the skiff captains carry radios and life vests, but many do not. Some carry life vests, while others offer only seat cushions as flotation devices.

It is not known whether Garcia had a radio or if the fishermen had access to life vests.

Bob Castellon, the Celia Angelina’s owner, sent two skiffs to look for the missing men Oct. 4 after the sun had set and they had not returned. When that proved fruitless, he reported them missing on the Celia Angelina’s radio or cell phone.

Castellon did not return phone calls to his offices in San Felipe and Hacienda Heights this week. He was aboard the Celia Angelina during the ill-fated trip, though not as captain, and remained in the area for nearly a week, aiding the search effort, after transporting his passengers to another vessel bound for San Felipe.

The Celia Angelina was detained briefly upon its return and Castellon was not aboard this week.

An investigation by Mexican authorities continues, one of the issues being whether Garcia, a part-time cook at a snack mall in San Felipe, is a qualified sportfishing captain.

More answers are expected this week. Rangel and Garcia probably will be able to tell investigators when and how they became stranded. They might also be able to shed light on the death of Madrid.

The three men had a large jug of water, a small ice chest and an unknown quantity of beer when they disappeared. A steady rain fell on Oct. 10, hampering the search effort but possibly providing relief to Rangel and Garcia.

That too will be answered in the next few days.

Meanwhile, the primary interest of Rangel’s family was to get him safely back across the border.

“You don’t understand, my mom can’t cook. She can’t even boil water and we were going to have to live with that?” a giddy Dolter said. “My dad’s a gourmet chef. I can’t wait to get him home.”

Things were far more somber at the Madrid household, where relatives had gathered. Services for Madrid are pending, his wife, Janice, said, acknowledging having taken some solace from the fact that her husband’s body had been found.

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Times Mexico City Bureau researcher Jose Diaz Briseno contributed to this story.