Violent deaths of Occidental doctor, caretaker baffle families

The vicious fatal beating of a 96-year-old doctor in his home near Occidental, and the ensuing death of the caretaker who attacked him before fighting with police in San Francisco, has devastated family and friends struggling to understand how two people known as gentle and kind could have met such a tragic end.

The family of retired pediatrician Sol Cohen said they knew caretaker Filimoni Raiyawa as a trusted friend and custodian, a man who for the past two years provided “beautiful care” as Cohen’s strength declined.

They never observed any friction or impatience on the part of Raiyawa, 57, nor any sign that he might lose control or unleash his impressive size as a force for harm.

The ties between Cohen’s family - including daughter Betsy Herschfield-Cohen of Mill Valley and son Philip Cohen of Petaluma - and Raiyawa’s family were close enough that Herschfield-Cohen spent much of Friday consoling his widow, Ilisapeci Raiyawa, by phone.

But Cohen’s survivors acknowledge Raiyawa - a certified nursing assistant and a well-known leader in the North Coast’s tight-knit Fijian community - seems to have suffered some kind of mental break. It led to an outburst of brutality early Thursday morning that authorities believe resulted in injuries that killed Cohen, who had grown frail in recent years.

There was more to come, as Raiyawa - 6 feet tall and 265 pounds - fled Cohen’s rural Dupont Road home for San Francisco, where he rear-ended another motorist, sparking a string of altercations with police there. Raiyawa fought off two female officers who responded to the crash, throwing one to the ground and punching the other repeatedly, San Francisco police officials said.

It ultimately took as many as five officers to subdue and handcuff Raiyawa. He was cuffed and on the ground when he suffered a medical emergency, stopped breathing and died, authorities said.

San Francisco police learned only later that Raiyawa was suspected in the brutal beating an hour or so earlier and was being sought by Sonoma County investigators.

The succession of violence remained a shock and a mystery, however - a jarring contradiction for those who knew Raiyawa as a devout Christian who opened his heart and home to Fijian immigrants and visitors of all ages, sponsored schools in his homeland and worked to foster democracy there. He offered guidance here and abroad to those who needed help accessing services and opportunity.

Many knew him as “Uncle Phil” or “Uncle Fili,” said Adi Asenaca Caucau of Santa Rosa, who worked with Raiyawa and his wife on numerous Fijian causes.

“He’s such a gentle, gentle, wonderful, loving, kindhearted person,” she said. “That’s why this is unbelievable. It does not match.”

“He was a loving man,” Betsy Herschfield-Cohen said. “We always called him a gentle giant. He would sit quietly in the house, not minding and never seeming like he felt put upon. We checked in with him a lot.”

Herschfield-Cohen hinted that something had changed in the one-time ironworker’s life recently, however. After close to two years of working shifts in her father’s house, Raiyawa asked permission about a month ago to stay a while in the Dupont Road house, though she declined to say why.

Ilisapeci Raiyawa, known as Ili, declined to speak to a reporter, as did what appeared to be family members gathered Friday at her house near South Wright Road and Finley Avenue southwest of Santa Rosa.

Contacted by phone, Ilisapeci Raiyawa, who was clearly crying, said she was simply “not in a state” to talk.

“We really feel for his family,” said Betsy Herschfield-Cohen’s wife, Annie. “He had children. He had a wife, and that’s a horrible thing - to be in this situation.”

Sol Cohen, a Baltimore native, was the son of Jewish Ukrainian immigrants who worked in sweatshops and had a rag cart, his daughter said. He grew up extremely poor and was able to fund his medical education through the G.I. Bill after serving as a gunner and bombardier, inspired to enlist in the war effort by Franklin Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Phil Cohen said by email that his father survived being shot down twice.

At medical school in Denver afterward, Sol Cohen married a classmate, Beatrice Cohen. He eventually moved to Marin County, taking a pediatric post with Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, where he worked for 30 years.

When he retired in 1981, he and his wife moved to a 10-acre property near Occidental where they eventually planted wine grapes, studying oenology at Santa Rosa Junior College and learning as they went, their daughter said. He kept his medical license active as long as he could, so he could treat farmworkers, their children and others, his daughter said.

Beatrice Cohen died of cancer in 1985, and, but for a brief second marriage, Sol Cohen has been mostly on his own ever since.

For years, he gardened and puttered around the house and yard until perhaps three years ago, when he began to develop slight dementia and slowed down enough that a caretaker made sense, his daughter said. He also confronted colon cancer at age 92, but survived, his son said.

The family found Raiyawa’s wife, first, through a service agency she runs, and then had Raiyawa himself providing most of the care, though other family members and friends from the Fijian caregiving community filled in, family members said.

Raiyawa seemed “the perfect caregiver,” said Cohen’s son.

The pair were seen routinely each morning at Howard Station Cafe in town, where their regular table became a memorial site Friday.

Raiyawa did lots of work around the house and yard, leaving it in perfect order, family members said.

But early Thursday morning, something went awry.

Sonoma County sheriff’s officials said they believe Cohen was still in his bed when he was brutally assaulted sometime before dawn.

Another caretaker who was at the house told authorities of a brief encounter with Raiyawa, and said he then discovered Cohen badly hurt, half in his bed. He called 911 around 4:56 a.m., and an ambulance was dispatched.

In the meantime, Raiyawa had fled in his blue Honda Odyssey minivan, and turned up around 5:30 a.m. on Richardson Avenue approaching Lombard Street near the Palace of Fine Arts, where the rear-end collision occurred.

San Francisco police said the minivan airbag deployed, and Raiyawa was “speaking incoherently” when the other driver approached him.

He was talking “about God and the will of God and stuff like that,” Public Information Officer Albie Esparza said.

It was Betsy Herschfield-Cohen who called Raiyawa’s wife to tell her what had happened.

She was, Herschfield-Cohen said, “devastated.”

Sonoma County sheriff’s Sgt. Shannon McIlvain, who oversees investigations, said medical confidentiality prevented him from answering any inquiries into Raiyawa’s medical or psychological health, but said it was still unclear what prompted him to attack Cohen.

Cohen, who had severe head injuries, never regained consciousness and died Thursday night in the hospital.

Family members gathered for breakfast Friday at Howard Station Cafe before heading over to the house for the first time. They found flowers and several notes on the table that restaurant staff always reserved for Cohen, and left there the red and black plaid jacket he wore there each day, along with notes of their own.

Family members said they were choosing to focus not on what happened Thursday but on the two years of gentle care Raiyawa provided for Cohen.

“He was more patient and gentle with an old man than any of us were,” Cohen’s daughter said, “and doing it day in and day out.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.