Thursday, Jul. 02, 2009
Jesse King, kayaker who died in ocean off Cambria, touched friends' lives
28-year-old who died off the Cambria coast was ‘full of love’ and a ‘good people person’
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closeAt 28, Jesse King was a dynamo and prankster who lit up any room with his entrance. He was a lover of life and mankind and, ironically given his death in a kelp bed off the coast of Cambria on Wednesday, a supreme waterman who surfed, free-dived, fished, kayaked and paddled outriggers.
Born March 14, 1981, to Christopher and Diana King of Susanville, King joined the Coast Guard in 2002 and was deployed to the station in Morro Bay in 2005. Chief Bosun Mate Kirk McKay, the senior officer at Morro Bay, recalled King as someone who was “a free-spirited guy, laid back, not the kind of guy you’d expect in the military, but he was a good people person.”
He added that although King left the service in 2007, it wasn’t like he really left; he simply walked south about 120 feet and became a Morro Bay reserve harbor patrolman and lifeguard.
Harbor Operations Manager Eric Endersby was sitting in his office Wednesday when he heard the Coast Guard’s emergency alert that a rescue was under way. Authorities were called by a witness about 2 p.m., who said that a kayaker was in the water off Cambria’s Marine Terrace neighborhood.
Endersby later learned the kayaker was King, who was “establishing himself as a leader in the lifeguard ranks who was instrumental in setting up the city’s Lifeguard Training Academy. A really nice guy, who had an artistic side, was into music, painted, read the New York Times and was just really interesting to talk to. He was into marine archeology, artifacts, shipwrecks and that kind of stuff.”
Sioux Strebin, facilities manager at the San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden, may have been the last person King talked with before his fateful dive.
He had called her Wednesday from Cuesta College, where he was completing his basic education requirement with plans to transfer to Cal Poly.
“Jess (also known as Jesso among friends) called me from school to just check-in,” said the woman who calls herself “his surrogate mom.”
“Think of all the people you love and put it into a ball and that was Jess. He was so full of love he could pour it out on everybody; he was a leader and an organizer.
“We used to joke that if you wanted people to meet other people, Jess was the guy to get them together. He was the guy who, when he walked into the room, everyone turned; he created laughter and smiles you wouldn’t believe,” she said. Strebin says lyrics to King’s favorite song from Ray LaMontagne’s “Let It Be Me” accurately describe the young man:
“… when all your faith is gone Feels like you can’t go on Let it be me Let it be me If it’s a friend that you need Let it be me Let it be me.”
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