SOS...SOS......
Fashions Overboard........
Coast Guard sent on Wild Goose Chase
Taxpayers Slammed over False Dunking....
Pride Goeth Before a Fall
Missing Cruise Passenger Found in Midwest
The Associated Press
K E T C H I K A N, Alaska, Sept. 25 — A cruise ship
passenger who officials feared had fallen
overboard was located Saturday, alive and well at
her home in suburban Detroit.
Alaska State troopers in Ketchikan called the Coast
Guard in Juneau to say the woman, Sherry Caminita, 73, had
been found.
Caminita, reached Saturday night at her home in St. Clair
Shores, Mich., told The Associated Press that she cut short
her cruise because of a disagreement with a traveling
companion.
“You know, she’s telling me what to wear, and I thought,
‘I don’t think so,’ so I just left,” Caminita said. “I just got sick
of it.”
She apparently got off while the Dawn Princess was
docked in Juneau on Friday, carrying just her purse and
leaving all her belongings on board, said Randy Holloway,
the Coast Guard’s search and rescue coordinator in Juneau.
Caminita said she didn’t remember where she caught the
plane to Detroit.
The captain of the cruise ship, owned by London-based
Princess Cruises, alerted the Coast Guard early Saturday that
the woman hadn’t been seen since Friday afternoon, and
could have fallen over the ship’s railing.
The Coast Guard sent two boats and a helicopter to
retrace the cruise ship’s path along a 225 mile stretch of
water between Juneau and Ketchikan that is filed with
islands, inlets and straits, said Coast Guard Petty Officer
Roger Wetherell.
The air temperature Saturday was in the 50s, but
Wetherell said a person wouldn’t survive long in the cold
water. Heavy fog was hampering the search Saturday.
Caminita, meanwhile, had already returned to Michigan.
She said she did not remember where she went immediately
after leaving the Dawn Princess, and did not remember
where she caught a plane to Detroit.
“I don’t know. I didn’t pay any attention,” she said. “I’m
not really familiar with all that.”
Longtime Friend a Fashion Critic
The Dawn Princess left Juneau early Saturday and was on its
way to Ketchikan when an employee assigned to clean the
woman’s cabin found her bed had not been slept in.
Wetherell said Caminita was traveling alone, but she said
she had begun the trip with two couples — including a
longtime friend who clashed with her over her choice of
what to wear to dinner.
“I told her what I was going to wear [Thursday] and she
said, ‘Oh, why don’t you wear this?’” Caminita said. “I said,
‘I’m wearing a black velvet skirt and top.’ It matches. I
brought the clothes, they’re mine and they’re really nice,
with the heels and all that. It wasn’t shabby, I’ll tell you that.
“Then they left to go to a show, and I chose not to do
that.”
The ship’s crew checked the ship’s computerized system
that notes each time a passenger or crew member boards or
departs the ship, but found no evidence that the woman had
stepped off in Juneau.
Caminita said she wasn’t sure if more travel was in her
future.
“If it is, I’m not going with her,” she said of her estranged
acquaintance. |
