‘I literally burst into tears.’ SLO County residents react to Kristin Smart arrests
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Where were you in 1996?
A pipe bombing attack hit Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics. “Everyone Loves Raymond” debuted on television and TV show and the original “Mission: Impossible” movie premiered in theaters.
President Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole in the presidential election. The Unabomber was arrested in a Montana cabin.
And, on Christmas, 6-year-old Jon Benet Ramsey was found dead in her parents’ home. That murder case was never solved.
Over the past 24 years, it seemed like the disappearance of Cal Poly freshman Kristin Smart, who went missing Memorial Day weekend 1996, would come to the same heartbreaking conclusion.
There were strong suspicions and a lot of search warrants, but no arrests.
That changed this week, when the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office announced that it had arrested Paul Flores, the last person seen with Kristin before she vanished, and his father, Ruben Flores.
Paul Flores, 44, was taken into custody Tuesday in San Pedro and charged with murder. Ruben Flores, 80, was arrested Tuesday at his Arroyo Grande home and charged with being an accessory to that crime.
As of Wednesday, both men were being held in San Luis Obispo County Jail.
But the investigation isn’t over yet. Kristin’s body still hasn’t been found, although Sheriff Ian Parkinson vowed Tuesday to “continue to focus on finding her remains.”
Cal Poly student goes missing
For those of us who were living and working in San Luis Obispo County in late May 1996, the past quarter century has been an emotional roller coaster.
“For some reason, Kristin has ‘been with me’ since she went missing,” said Judith Larmore, events coordinator at Cambria’s Old Santa Rosa Chapel. “There have been others who have suffered similar fates, but Kristin, Kristin was different.”
I asked my stalwart troop of online and personal friends about how they reacted when they heard the news about Kristin’s disappearance. Some said they shed tears.
Kim Miller of Cambria said she remembers the 1996 Memorial Day weekend “really well.”
“I worked at Cal Poly and I was going to take photographs that Saturday evening at the big opening gala for the Performing Arts Center, so I was on campus,” she recalled.
“I heard a student went missing,” she said, “but it was kind of low-key at first.”
There also were construction projects then, Miller recalled. “There was talk that maybe she fell in or she was killed and her body was put there and then cemented over.
“Through the years,” she added, “it was surreal to be on campus knowing Kristin went missing, possibly from the very campus.”
At the time of Kristin’s disappearance, Cal Poly professor Dan Eller said, “I was living in Cambria and working in San Simeon.”
“I was worried about the welfare of my family and the community,” he said. “My wife worked over the hill in Paso Robles, and I felt she was safe, but only up to a point.”
When news broke about two years later that serial killer Rex Krebs had kidnapped, raped and murdered two San Luis Obispo college students, “the magnitude of these two cases had me on edge, even outside of the city of San Luis Obispo,” Eller said.
In the 16 years since he started teaching at Cal Poly, he added, “These cases are always part of my classroom discussions concerning student safety, on and off campus.”
Former state Sen. Sam Blakeslee said he remembers “feeling so angry and helpless to see these women disappearing off our streets.”
“Yes, Krebs was caught quickly, but Flores not so much,” Blakeslee said, adding that Krebs, who is on death row, “still sits in a cell unpunished for his crimes. Makes one long for a simpler time when justice was meted out quickly and unequivocally.”
Blakeslee, a former state assemblyman, is the founding director of Cal Poly‘s Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy.
Retired Cambria librarian Kristen Barnhart said she, her 6-year-old daughter and another daughter attending Cal Poly were living in San Luis Obispo when Kristin disappeared in 1996.
“Both my kids felt at risk,” their mom recalled.
Jennifer Franco Smith, co-owner of Harvey’s Honey Huts in Cambria, said her firm was “indirectly involved in the searches through the canyons off campus,” providing services to the horse-mounted searchers.
When the call came in requesting the company’s services, she said, “I cried. I can’t ever forget that moment.”
Former Tribune reporter Danna Dykstra Coy, now a well-known landscape photographer, worked with fellow journalist Carol Roberts on early coverage of the search for Kristin.
“I wrote the first (story) from the Cal Poly police … who put me in touch with the Smarts,” Dykstra Coy said. “They let me know then they were not happy with Cal Poly police not taking Kristin’s disappearance seriously.”
After Kristin failed to return home as planned, the Smart family drove down from Stockton and launched a full-bore search for their daughter, Dykstra Coy said.
Denise Smart, Kristin’s mom, rejected the University Police Department’s theory that Kristin was with a boyfriend or spending the Memorial Day weekend with friends, Dysktra Coy recalled, saying that “Kristin would never, ever leave without saying goodbye.”
Former Tribune photographer Jayson Mellom was working his second day at the newspaper when then-editor Mike Stover assigned him to capture photos of Ruben Flores as he went into a grand jury hearing that October.
“Ruben turned and used his point-and-shoot camera to take a picture of me taking a picture of him,” Mellom said.
“It was the weirdest thing,” he added, calling it “crazy that in the middle of all that” Flores would have had the presence of mind to bring a camera with him and then use it.
The case hit home hard for Mellom, then a newlywed.
His wife’s University of Georgia sorority sister had been murdered, and “they never caught the guy,” he said, sadly. “Now, I’m just floored. I think everybody who was here then was amazed” by the recent arrests.
SLO County residents react to arrests of Paul Flores, father
When news of the arrests of Paul and Ruben Flores broke, some people said they cried.
Singer-songwriter Jude Johnstone, a former Cambria resident, said “I don’t imagine there was a dry eye in SLO County among people our age after that news. .... I literally burst into tears.”
She called the news “incredible” and “a long time coming.”
Larmore said that, when she heard the news, “I cried … for her family and I cried for Kristin, who I hope can now come home.”
Miller expressed hope that the latest development in Kristin’s case “will lead to finding her body and finally justice.”
“I think the investigation was messed up at the beginning,” Miller added, by investigators “not searching (Paul Flores’) dorm room right away. I have to say, this will be interesting as it unfolds.”
Former San Luis Obispo wedding coordinator Susan Smitty Price, who also worked for The Tribune for a time, said, “It’s nice to finally see him (Paul Flores) in custody! Twenty-five years is a long time to hold something like that in. Kudos to the relentless quest to get to this point.”
“We have always felt that Paul Flores was certainly withholding information if not downright guilty,” said Sharon McCartney, a longtime Cambria resident. “At this time of his arrest, we are just a little let down in that we still don’t have closure for Kristin’s family, and we still probably have a very lengthy trial with an unknown verdict coming.”
Added photographer Michele Sherman, ”It has been difficult to imagine how an ordinary student (allegedly) found a way to outfox law enforcement for so long.”
“Without any premeditated planning, how did he manage to expertly destroy key evidence which could have resulted in a quick arrest?” she asked. “How did he expertly hide a body without premeditated planning? It is baffling.”
Some San Luis Obispo County residents said the discussion of Kristin’s possible fate made them think about their own families.
Cambria businessman Aaron Wharton said he lived near where Kristin disappeared, “albeit a year before.”
“And now having a freshman daughter age 19 in college, it did make me think about the case and how college is supposed to be a safe place … one of the first places our children get to go and be on their own,” he said.
“Having attended Cal Poly shortly after (Kristin’s) disappearance, and during the Rex Krebs reign of terror, today brought a relative amount of closure,” said Carrie Ann Yaple, a former Cambria resident who now lives in Paso Robles. “Like Aaron, I thought a lot about my daughter and all of our children’s safety.”
“This is all so sad. Many of the headline stories are breaking our hearts, and I hope there is a resolve for the families,” Barbara Della-Bitta of Cambria said. “I cannot imagine the loss of a child.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2021 at 2:55 PM.
