American Yeon-Su Kim dead after sea kayaking in Mexico; husband missing

Family members of the Arizona couple said Kim’s body was found by a local fishing boat near Puerto Peñasco on Sunday afternoon, family friend Lisa Aumack told The Washington Post.

Earlier that Sunday, Mexican authorities in Sonora state had said they found a body matching the description of the couple who were reported missing on Thanksgiving, but they did not confirm that it was Kim’s body.

Allen, a real estate agent, and Kim, the executive director of the forestry school at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, went to Mexico for the long holiday weekend with their teenage daughter, Aumack said.

About 1 p.m. Thursday, they headed out for sea kayaking at a beach in Puerto Peñasco, a Gulf of California resort city also known as Rocky Point.

“Very strong winds came up,” according to the verified GoFundMe page that Aumack created to aid the search effort. Allen brought his daughter back to shore — it is unclear whether he rowed her back or swam with her — then went back to help his wife.

That was the last time anyone saw Allen or Kim, Aumack said. Since then, authorities in Sonora have been trying to find the couple. Their daughter is still in Rocky Point, Aumack said.

Sonora state’s emergency services agency posted a photo of the missing couple on its Twitter account Saturday afternoon and said it was coordinating the search of land, sea and air with the navy and municipal authorities.

American tourists and locals with boats volunteered to look for the couple in the ocean, Aumack said. Shrimp boats were asked to search the ocean for the couple; people with ATVs offered to drive up and down the coast while scanning the sea; and volunteer pilots were flying above the Gulf of California to spot the missing Americans or the kayak.

Aumack’s granddaughter and the couple’s daughter are best friends, Aumack said. She has known the family, including their college freshman son who did not go to Mexico, for 11 years.

“This is a family that is well known, much loved and respected in Flagstaff,” Aumack said. “It is a loss to the entire community.”

The university said in a statement: “Yeon-Su was an invaluable faculty member. Her accomplishments and contributions to her academic discipline, our university’s mission, and the broader community were many.”

The university also expressed hope that Kim’s husband soon would be found and brought home safely.