Teen’s Death Baffles Family, Friends

OJAI — Throughout her 18 years, Maren India Hale was a vibrant, healthy, athletic girl, ready to tackle the next adventure and lead the charge.

She would hop on a horse at her family’s Ojai ranch or fix a broken tractor. She loved to go boating and swimming.

Days after her mysterious drowning at Lake Nacimiento in northern San Luis Obispo County, family members and Hale’s friends on the boating trip during her final moments were still trying to make sense of her baffling death Wednesday afternoon.

In the peaceful lake, where she had been giggling, chatting, floating and hanging on to a wooden platform at the back of a slow-moving power boat, friends say Hale simply released the platform, laid her face in the water and slipped away.

An autopsy performed Sunday in San Luis Obispo County may answer some of their questions, though officials were not available Sunday to discuss the results.

Friends say Hale had complained Wednesday morning that her chest, jaw and neck were a little sore, that she was tired and the water seemed cold.

But just before her drowning, she seemed to be having the time of her life, said Cambria Vogel, 18. “I’ve never seen Maren that happy,” she said. Hale’s family believes she may have had an unknown illness that surfaced suddenly.

The seven girlfriends on vacation with Hale have been inseparable since their frantic 45-minute attempt to rescue her. On Sunday, they attended services at the Church of the Living Christ in Meiners Oaks. They have been working on a collage featuring photographs of her. And they took to the beach in Ventura, hoping the outdoors would bring them some peace.

In Ojai, Hale’s mother, brother and stepfather were surrounded by friends and cousins who called and visited to share memories.

They recalled how Hale loved animals and brought home perhaps a dozen stray cats and dogs in her lifetime. They remembered how she liked to direct homespun plays starring her younger cousins. Her pet peeves were liars and cowards, they said. She loved country music, especially Garth Brooks. She and her friends had planned to see Alabama in concert at a nearby county fair the night she died.

The Nordhoff High School graduate, who worked at a local hardware store and was planning to take courses at Ventura College this fall, had not yet selected a career to pursue.

But she had her personal life in order, her family said. Hale and her boyfriend of two years, high school sweetheart Jeremy Ferro, were inseparable, said her stepfather, Brent Wilson, a diver who works for Channel Islands National Park.

“They lived for each other,” he said. “Their focus was for each other, not where they lived, not what they did.”

Ferro, 19, who did not tag along on the all-girl vacation, said Sunday he has not been able to eat or sleep since learning of Hale’s death. “I still can’t believe this is happening,” he said.

“The only lesson to be learned is that life is so short and you never known when you’re going to be robbed of it,” said Hale’s aunt, Teresa Ross. When she learned of the accident, she said, “The first thing I wanted to do was just get my kids and just hug them and never let them go.”

Funeral arrangements, which are pending, will be handled by Charles Carroll Funeral Homes in Ventura.