Woman feared swept into sea is teacher from Ireland

A woman who disappeared off the Sonoma Coast was identified Monday as Nuala O'Donohoe, who came to California from Ireland for a meditation retreat.

O'Donohoe, 42, was a teacher from Dublin, said Jeremy Stinson, supervising ranger at Sonoma Coast State Park. She disappeared Saturday afternoon and was presumed drowned after her clothing was found floating in the ocean.

State park rangers continued searching Monday in the Salt Point area. A state parks lifeguard was to comb the coast on a personal watercraft.

"It's difficult to predict where a body might end up, if it's going to come back to shore," Stinson said.

O'Donohoe apparently is the 12th person to die on the Sonoma-Mendocino coast this year. Most had been abalone diving.

She had been meditating on a rocky outcropping in Horseshoe Cove at Salt Point park when she may have been washed into the ocean, rangers said.

The rocks there are exposed, and the surf Saturday was very big, Stinson said.

O'Donohoe had flown into California on Sept. 25, a family member told Stinson. The retreat, held at a vacation rental residence at The Sea Ranch, began Sept. 28.

She was with others from the retreat Saturday at the coast. The others were meditating individually, out of view of each other.

The group was to meet back at a car at 3:30 p.m. When O'Donohoe didn't return, members of the group discovered some of her clothes and a backpack and spotted her pants as they washed out to sea.

A search Saturday and Sunday by rangers and Coast Guard boat and helicopter crews failed to locate further signs of O'Donohoe.

State park rangers worked with police in Ireland to contact the woman's family.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com.