Mike Oakley could see that his friend Holly Thomas was about to plunge 48 feet over the Skykomish River’s deadly Canyon Falls on Sunday.
But Oakley was strong, a 20-year-old mason’s apprentice who often punched out after a full day’s work to go pump iron. He also was a strong swimmer and at home in the outdoors.
So he fell with her, wrapping his arms and one leg around Thomas in a bearhug.
Right over the edge.
Just moments before, Oakley, Eric Larsen, 21; Thomas, 20; and her boyfriend Matt Winthal, 20, were floating down the Skykomish River on inner tubes. They were just north of the King-Snohomish county line in the Cascade foothills.
None was wearing a life jacket, police said.
Just ahead was Canyon Falls. An 18-year-old Woodinville man, Chris Lund, had died at the same place July 4.
A resident who lived on the banks of the Skykomish started screaming for the four to get out of the river. Heeding the warning, Oakley and his friends moved to the right side of the river and climbed onto a series of flat rocks, said his mother, Suzanne Oakley of Kirkland. But Thomas couldn’t get out of the water in time. Oakley went to help.
“He was straddling a 4-foot-wide trough right before the waterfall, and holding her, too,” said Larsen, Oakley’s co-worker and friend for 10 years.
“Then she slid right between his legs,” Larsen said. “He fell with her.”
“He probably thought he would get some bruises and have a good story to tell. He always thought of others first.”
Larsen watched the two fall.
Suzanne Oakley sobbed as she told the story of her son’s death. “He knew he was going over, he knew she was going over, and he was protecting her.”
Warning signs are posted too far away from the waterfall, say critics and parents who have had to bury those who have died there.
“It says something like ‘hazardous waters,’ but to a 20-year-old that means they’re going to have a good ride,” Suzanne Oakley said.
When Mike Oakley and Thomas went over the edge of Canyon Falls, Larsen and Winthal ran along the shore to reach them at the lower pond. Thomas popped up and grabbed a breath of air, and the two men pulled her to safety.
One side of her body had been battered by the rocks, some of her ribs had been broken and a lung crushed, Suzanne Oakley said, but Thomas’ other side was uninjured, protected by her son’s bearhug.
“Call him a hero, a savior, but he was just being Mike,” Larsen said. “He didn’t even think about it.”
Mike Oakley never came up.
“They looked for Mike, and he wasn’t there,” Suzanne Oakley said. “They looked and looked and looked, but he wasn’t there.”
Oakley was born May 17, 1984, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He grew up in Kirkland, playing soccer at Robert Frost Elementary School and attending Kamiakin Junior High School.
His mother said he lived life fast, rode motorcycles and played hard. He loved off-roading and camping at Salmon la Sac in the Cascades.
He graduated from BEST High School in 2002 and lived in Bothell with Larsen, his best friend.
“One day he said, ‘Eric, never waste a sunny day,’ and he never did,” Larsen said. “He lived life to the fullest.”
“No words can really describe him,” he added. “All he wanted to do was help people and have fun.”
Oakley’s mother said her son had come through scrapes before, and that Sunday afternoon his friends were “sure he was fine, just downriver and barbecuing and eating bugs.”
But the sun set Sunday night and there was no sign of Oakely. It wasn’t until Monday afternoon that volunteer search-and-rescue divers found his body 20 yards below the falls.
Suzanne Oakley said her son’s body was intact, without a scrape, only missing one shoe.
“His arms were stuck, holding her (Holly) in a big bearhug, trying still to hold her, one leg around where she would have been,” she said.
“He did his best.”
An autopsy determined that Oakley had drowned.
Suzanne Oakley said she met with Thomas, who was released from Harborview Medical Center on Thursday, to assure her that the accident was not her fault.
Oddly, she said one of her son’s goals was to enter the Coast Guard and work in search and rescue.
“He packed a lot into 20 years,” she said. Recently, he was more affectionate, she said. “He would always say, ‘I love you, Mom,’ for past two years and hugged me. Maybe he knew it was all we would get for awhile.
“People should get more hugs.”
On Tuesday, Snohomish County closed that section of the Skykomish River with a new sign: River closed to travel. Dangerous falls.
The sign is posted on a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway trestle, but is still too far down the river, said Juli Lund, Chris Lunds mother.
She helped put up two more signs on Thursday. They were donated by a Marysville group called Life Saving Signs.
If the signs had gone up sooner, Mike Oakley and Chris Lund might still be having fun, Suzanne Oakley said.
A safety cable across the river would be better than signs alone, she added.
Some places in the river look perfectly calm, said Snohomish County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen. You see that and think on a hot day it looks so inviting, but that river is just unforgiving. Weve lost many lives through the years.
Oakley worked at Homchick Stoneworks in Kenmore with his father, Kirk, and Winthal and Larsen. The offices were devastated this week.
His boss, Michael Homchick, praised Oakley.
All of us are going to die, but very, very few of us are going to die a hero, he said.
Herald reporter Katherine Schiffner contributed to this story.
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