Nearly 14 months has passed since 21-year-old Marc Ma — an ‘Iolani School graduate, a University of Nevada Wolfpack football player and a 2012 and 2013 Interscholastic League of Honolulu all-star — vanished while paddleboarding on Lake Tahoe with a group of friends.
So it came as a surprise when his family got a call Monday morning from volunteers that they had found his body.
The discovery brings “closure,” brother Matt Ma said by telephone from Maui. “It feels good to finally be able to bring him home.”
Ma noted the news came oddly on the first day of Nevada’s summer camp, the start of its football season. “He would have been a registered junior,” he said.
Although it hadn’t been confirmed by the coroner’s office Monday, Ma said the description of the clothing and body match his brother’s 6-foot-3, 255-pound frame and the board shorts he went out with.
On June 10, 2016, Marc Ma was with friends when high winds caused the paddleboarders to turn back to shore, but Ma’s board was later found adrift.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office called off the search after several days. A private search party from Idaho also found nothing.
Matt Ma said a Maui woman reached out to him on Facebook and said a nonprofit called Bruce’s Legacy found her two brothers who had been lost in a boating accident on a Nevada lake. She said police don’t have the equipment to dive at the depth needed.
The Mas contacted the organization a few months ago, and got a call last week that the team was headed to nearby Shasta, Calif., to find a 4-year-old boy lost in a boating accident.
“I think Bruce’s Legacy was our last shot,” Matt Ma said. “The lake is huge. You can narrow it down to one part, but after a year it might have floated away.”
Keith Cormican, founder of Bruce’s Legacy, a volunteer organization based in Black River Falls, Wis., and his team arrived Friday in Lake Tahoe and began searching Saturday. Lucas Weber, a teammate of Marc Ma who had been there the day of his disappearance, guided them to the area.
They made the discovery Sunday using sonar at a depth of 240 feet in the West Shore Cafe area, where he was last seen.
“We found a possible image on our sonar Sunday afternoon,” Cormican said by phone. “We put a remote-operated vehicle down, and a device with lights and a camera and a grabber arm. We were able to actually grab him with that and bring him up with that.”
He said cold water helps to preserve the body. Matt Ma said he was told the body could have remained intact for up to three years in those conditions.
Cormican, who doesn’t charge for his services and asks only for traveling expenses, said the organization is named for his brother Bruce, a firefighter who died responding to a drowning victim 21 years ago. It is funded by donations, which can be made at bruceslegacy.com.
Besides technology, Cormican said it takes time and effort to be successful. They put in 12- to 14-hour days, starting at 5 a.m. and ending at 8 or 9 p.m.
“We put our hearts into these cases,” he said. “I take it very seriously. I pour everything into it I can.”
But he added, “We’re not always successful.”
