I was on the San Antonio Express News website the other day and saw that they were doing a photographic retrospective of events at Canyon Lake. Contained in the retrospective were two photos of a body recovery operation that occurred in 1983.  I was there and I am in both photos. You kinda have to trust me on this since I’m not identifiable.

When we weren’t policing my partner Doug Smith and I did some recovery dives in the area.  Never did a rescue.  We got called out on a Sunday morning.  It seems the madame at a local massage parlor got in a fight with her boyfriend.  He drove her and her brand new Cadillac into the lake at about 2:00 A.M. on a Saturday night.  It ended up 100 feet from the bank in 104 feet of water.

We were told that we were looking for two Korean nationals, male and female. I found the male on the first dive in about thirty feet of water.  I swam right over him, then around him and then hovered.  Based on the build, coloring and features I thought the guy I was looking at was a Mexican Male.  “Man,” I thought, “that sucks, sitting on the lake bank doing a little fishing, a little drinking and then to get run over by a Cadillac.”

I brought him up.  Turned out he was the Korean male.

First dive the second day we went from 85 degrees surface water temperature, 10 feet visibility to 59 degrees water temperature, 18 inch visibility (only with lights). The down line anchor missed handing on her by two feet, put me right on top of her.  The car was five feet away, but we never saw it.

I didn’t find the car, but I was there the following day to raise it.  We were a volunteer group with no funds, but a wealth of experience.  Lacking money for a crane we were going to resort to rigging lift bags.  This would have entailed probably eight or ten dives to make it work and even then there was no guarantee.

One of our group ordered up a crane (pictured). I made the dive to secure the shackle and up that car came.  We told the crane operator to bill the Sheriff’s Office and that’s the last we heard of it.

The good old days. Saw something that needed doing, if you had the expertise you went and did it.