Two sent to hospital in suspected DUI crash near Timber Cove in Sonoma County

A Timber Cove woman suspected of drunken driving was arrested and two female passengers traveling with her were hospitalized with serious injuries, after she apparently lost control and her car struck multiple trees and ended up down an embankment near Timber Cove along the Sonoma Coast late Sunday night.

Authorities arrested Mariana Salazar, 29, on two felony DUI charges and driving her Nissan Sentra without a license, after the Nissan Sentra she was driving veered off Timber Cove Road south of Seaview Road and crashed around 11:30 p.m.

Salazar left the scene and walked home, where she was later arrested after a sobriety test, California Highway Patrol spokesman David deRutte said Monday. Salazar was uninjured but checked at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital, before she was booked into Sonoma County Jail Monday morning.

Her bail was set at $100,000 and she is scheduled to make a first appearance in county court Tuesday.

Helicopters were deployed to remote forests along the Timber Cove coastline to airlift passengers Valentina Felix, 38, and Alicia Felix, 35, of Cazadero to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

The three women are coworkers at an area hotel and apparently were driving home from work when the crash occurred, deRutte said.

Firefighters initially struggled to locate the badly injured passengers, and spent hours searching the area for them, Timber Cove Fire Chief Erich Lynn said.

The pair had been taken separately by at least two well-intended drivers to nearby properties where they could use landlines to call and wait for help, Lynn said. But fire and medical personnel had a hard time finding them because of that, and had to go door-to-door and canvass the terrain using infrared scanners to figure out where the two injured woman ended up, Lynn said.

“The good Samaritans do it out here because cellphones don’t work,” the fire chief said. “You can’t call anything from where you are. There’s so much confusion. If cellphones worked, it’d be a different ballgame.”

You can reach Staff Writer Yousef Baig at 707-521-5390 or yousef.baig@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @YousefBaig.