2nd Plane Crash Victim’s Body Found

Divers recovered a second body Friday as the difficult ocean-floor search continued for two other people still missing after a pair of light planes collided over the San Pedro Channel near Long Beach.

The first body, recovered minutes after Thursday’s accident, was identified as that of John Michael Chisolm, 56, of Huntington Beach, a flight instructor in one of the planes. The second body was that of Stephen Arlow, 42, a flight instructor trainee in Chisolm’s plane.

Family members said the flight instructor in the other plane was Kevin Sok, 33, a native of Cambodia who lived in Long Beach. Sources close to the investigation said Sok’s passenger was Michael Wallace, 18, of La Habra, a student pilot on his first flight.

The Coast Guard said small pieces of wreckage from the Cessna 172 and Cessna 152 were being retrieved from a mile-square search area on the ocean floor just south of the Long Beach entrance to the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors.

The approximately 20 divers were hampered by cold water, strong currents and storm sediment that limited visibility in the water to near zero.

The divers stopped their operation at 6 p.m. Friday and will resume this morning, though search boats were to remain in the area through the night, officials said.

The search is being supervised by the National Transportation Safety Board and involves such other agencies as the Navy and Coast Guard, the Long Beach and Los Angeles fire departments and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The NTSB’s findings on the crash are not expected for months.

The planes, both of which were rented from the 600-member Long Beach Flying Club, based at Long Beach Municipal Airport, collided in clear weather about 3:30 p.m. Thursday while on training flights over the harbor, a popular practice area.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Pippenger, operations officer for the search, said at a news briefing Friday evening that one of the airplanes was banking when it broadsided the other. Pippenger said the pilot of the banking plane may have had difficulty seeing because his plane was headed into the sun.

Citing witness accounts, Pippenger said one plane broke apart and the other hit the water intact.

Neither plane was believed to be under the guidance of air traffic controllers, so it was the responsibility of the pilots, under Federal Aviation Administration rules, to “see and avoid” other aircraft.

“On a good day, hundreds of planes may use that area,” said Bill Kerry, a member of the flying club, a former flight instructor and a pilot for more than 30 years.

“You need to be constantly vigilant,” Kerry said. “Any pilot who has flown in that area for any length of time probably has had at least one close call out there.”

Coast Guard Lt. Jeanne Reincke said divers found the second body about 10 a.m. Friday on the ocean floor. She said that several small pieces of debris were found and recovered nearby and that only one of the planes has been located on the bottom.

Reincke said the water in the search area is about 70 feet deep. She said a water temperature of only 42 degrees and turbidity churned up by the powerful storm earlier this week were making the search slow and difficult.

“It’s like looking for your socks in a dark room with sunglasses on,” Reincke said.

Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Rich Pillsbury agreed, explaining: “It’s been a sad undertaking, but one that has to be done. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack out there.”

The victims’ families mourned Friday as authorities conceded that the chances of finding anyone alive appeared to be all but gone.

Friends and relatives of Sok--who said they heard about the crash on the radio, never thinking that he might be involved--gathered at his home in Long Beach to grapple with the frustration of not knowing what happened.

“Right now, we don’t know who to blame, who’s at fault, anything,” said the instructor’s 23-year-old brother, Mike.

Mike Sok said he, his brother, two other siblings and their parents immigrated to this country from Cambodia in 1981. Kevin Sok earned certifications as a flight instructor and an airplane mechanic.

Kevin Sok was an avid pilot and “always wanted to fly and asked his family and friends to go with him,” Mike Sok said. “I was always too busy to take him up on it.”

Fellow instructors at the flying club described the bachelor pilot as quiet but congenial, quick to laugh and make friends.

At the flying club, someone placed a small shrine of flowers on the tarmac where Sok usually parked his plane.

Chalked on the pavement was a message: “Thanks for the hours of smiles, Kevin. We love you.”

Friends said Chisolm was known as “John By-the-Book Chisolm”-- a fire inspector who was as meticulous about checking armament caches at the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach as he was about making lengthy preflight checks of his aircraft.

“He was an affable guy, but he carried out tasks with a pensive attention to detail,” said Larry Bach, the base’s fire chief. “He was very serious about his piloting. I just can’t understand the nature of this accident.”

Bach said he still recalls an incident several years ago, when he and his children piled into a plane that Chisolm was to pilot over Disneyland and the harbor. Bach said that before they took off, Chisolm spent nearly an hour checking out the aircraft.

Another friend, David Witt, said Chisolm felt safest when he was flying, but he was aware of the dangers.

“He always said it was more difficult to fly on a clear day than on an overcast day, because you can see the silhouette of other planes on an overcast day,” Witt said.

Friends said Chisolm, who was divorced, was devoted to his 16-year-old daughter and to his church, often sleeping with a Bible beside his fire bunk.

Relatives said he often tuned into the “700 Club,” a Christian television program.

“He was always a private person,” said his sister, Virginia Thompson. “He had a sense of humor, but he was always pretty serious about things.”

After he left his civilian job as a government firefighter, Chisolm worked as a contract flight instructor in Long Beach and became co-owner of Alliance International Aviation, a flight service business in Chino.

Arlow, a 20-year pilot, was training to become a certified flight instructor, according to relatives.

Married, with no children, he was a devout Christian who once operated a personal ministry for immigrants from Laos and Vietnam.

“He was one of those people that you meet who was totally without guile,” said his brother-in-law, Paul Engstrom. “If he only owned four shirts, he would have given away two of them, because he wouldn’t need more than two.”

Engstrom said relatives feared the worst when they heard about the crash Thursday and Arlow failed to return home as scheduled. He said officials notified the family Friday that Arlow had been killed.

The fourth victim, Wallace, graduated last year from La Serna High School and was attending college. He enjoyed riding horses and spent a lot of time with his girlfriend who lived in the neighborhood, said Elizabeth Wilson, a neighbor for the past 10 years.

“We’ve known him since he was in elementary school. He’s a good kid. This is a shock,” Wilson said.

The neighbor said she was particularly concerned for Wallace’s father and siblings. The young man’s mother died of a heart attack two or three years ago, she said.

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Times staff writers Stephanie Chavez, Elise Gee, Monte Morin, Antonio Olivo and Mai Tran contributed to this story.