San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
AFTER OWN LOSS, WIDOW AIDS OTHER FAMILIES
Theresa Sturkie joins group dedicated to helping loved ones find missing hikers
Two years ago this week, Theresa Sturkie of Oceanside was combing the hills and trails in the Mount San Jacinto State Park and Wilderness Area in a desperate search for her husband, who had gone missing in the area months earlier on Jan. 5, 2019.
The mystery of 55-year-old John Sturkie’s disappearance would finally be solved four months later, when search crews found his partially mummified body in a mountain ravine on June 29, 2019. He had been off-roading alone on the Black Mountain Truck Trail at 6,300-foot elevation near One Horse Ridge when his truck got stuck and ran out of gas. After spending the night in the truck, it’s believed he began hiking down the mountain toward safety, missed a switchback on the snow-covered trail and fell to his death.
After nearly six months of wondering where her husband’s body lay, Sturkie said she and their four children felt a strange sense of relief when she got the call from the Riverside Sheriff ’s Department that June morning. “I know it sounds weird that we were happy that we could finally have a funeral, but it was so agonizing not knowing,” she said. “Being able to bring him home and bury him brought an immense amount of peace to our family.”
Now Sturkie is working to bring relief to others families gripped with the same agonizing uncertainty. She’s now an officer for the Fowler-o’sullivan Foundation (FOF), a Menifee organization dedicated to helping families search for loved ones who have gone missing while hiking. The foundation, which was started in 2017 and incorporated as a nonprofit last year, is named for two long-missing Pacific
registered, noncompliant rentals. While they’re popular with vacationers and with the units’ owners, who love the extra income the units generate, misbehaving rental visitors frustrate nearby residents.
Kranz and Councilwoman Kellie Shay Hinze brought forward the initial request to increase oversight on short-term rentals, saying there have been problems with these rentals for years and they recently held a Zoom meeting with fed-up neighbors of some units.
Hinze said she saw both sides of the issue. Her mother has owned a shortterm rental for years, though she’s not currently renting it because of the coronavirus pandemic. Her mom loves meeting guests from around the world and enjoys the extra income the unit provides, Hinze said. However, she added, she herself has lived next door to a “very problematic” short-term rental.
“I think I’ve experienced the best of vacation rental ... and I’ve seen some of the aspects when they go wrong,” she said.
During the two council members’ recent Zoom meeting, neighbors of short-term rentals said some units become big party houses nearly every summer weekend and rental managers don’t respond when neighbors call to complain. The problems appear to be more common at places that are whole house rentals rather than ones where owners live in part of the units, Hinze said.
Kranz said there are some areas of Neptune Avenue where there are so many vacation rentals that entire blocks have the potential to become party zones.
On Wednesday, almost all of the nearly 20 public comments came from people who own or manage short-term rentals, rather than neighbors with complaints. Many of the owners said they thought the city should concentrate on enforcing existing regulations rather than creating new ones.
“Go after the one percent that are causing the problems,” said Rory Revier of Seabreeze Vacation Rentals, which manages hundreds of short-term rentals in Southern California. “It’s not coming from us. It’s coming from the bad apples.”
Most owners said they were opposed to a proposal to require seven-day or more bookings during the summer months, saying they wanted flexibility in scheduling. Even owners of places that did typically rent for seven or more days said the proposal was too strict, though a few people who own rental units in the Sea Bluffs community, which already has a seven-day requirement, said it was fine with them.
Many rental owners said they would support the city using the Airbnb booking website to collect transient occupancy tax, or hotel bed taxes, on their rental units, saying that would make things easier for them. They also encouraged the city to take action against unlicensed vacation rentals.
Council members said those items sounded like good ideas to them, too. The taxing proposal “sounds like it makes sense,” Councilman Joe Mosca said, adding that he would also like to focus on reducing noise and trash complaints, not on setting requirements on nightly bookings.
Lyndes also said she wanted to see more enforcement of existing regulations, while Mayor Catherine Blakespear said she’d like particular attention paid to cracking down on people who are renting unlicensed units.
“We need to make sure that’s a top part of our enforcement efforts,” she said.
Kranz noted that people who are wondering if a unit is legal can check using a mapping program on the city’s website. To use the program, visit encinitasca.gov/home/ Online-services.