Local family remembers the loved ones lost in last week’s Coyote
Lake plane crash
Morgan Hill – When the phone rang at 10pm on Dec. 21, Helen Espy immediately knew something was wrong.
The small plane her son-in-law was flying was late arriving at Chandler Airport in Fresno. Her daughter Sara Armstrong, her granddaughter Kacie Kusalich and her great-grandson Cody Duncan were all on board.
“My heart dropped,” Espy said. “I knew.”
Shortly after making phone calls to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Aviation Administration, her phone rang again.
The Armstrong’s plane would never arrive in Fresno. The call confirmed that a small plane had crashed into a hillside in Coyote Lake Park on Dec. 21.
Espy and her son Nathan Kusalich, whose 11-year-old daughter Kacie was on board, drove to the operation center where rescuers were gathering.
“We were just praying that they weren’t suffering,” she said. “That was the most horrifying night – just not knowing.”
According to Espy, all four were killed instantly.
Nathan is now adopting Sara and Matthew Armstrong’s two teenage daughters, Brandy, 16, and Brittany, 14.
“In the plane he lost one daughter, and he’s gaining two,” Sara’s sister Leah Graham said.
The tightknit Mormon family is relying on their faith and each other to get through this difficult time.
“We’re all staying together like glue, that’s the only way we can get through this,” Graham said.
Sara, 37, was raised in Morgan Hill with her five other siblings and graduated from Live Oak High School. She studied cosmetology at Gavilan College.
She met her husband while waitressing at the former restaurant Cindy’s in Morgan Hill.
“He gave her a $20 tip to get her attention. Then he asked her out,” Espy recalled with a smile in her voice. “Matthew was always fun-loving. He practically lived on fast food as he was always on the go. He was a comic.”
He loved music and playing his bass guitar. The 41-year-old often played during services for South Valley Community Church in Gilroy where the family was active for more than a decade when they lived in Los Banos.
Sara was the type of mom who sewed sequins on her daughters’ dance costumes – and then on their friends’ costumes. She opened her home and her heart to anyone in need.
The Armstrongs welcomed 4-year-old Cody into their home when he was just one because his parents couldn’t take care of him.
“She is the most unselfish person in the whole world. She really was,” Espy said. “She was willing to alter her whole lifestyle for Cody.”
The machine shop in Fresno the Armstrongs owned was a family business. Sara did the books. Matthew worked as a machinist and the girls were just starting to get involved with the parts. Cody would ride around on his bike for entertainment.
Cody opened up to his new family. He flourished with them – and he changed their lives for the better. He became the light in their family. Strangers off the street would want to touch his golden hair and pinch his round cheeks.
“He was just a heartbreaker. Everybody loved Cody,” Espy said.
Kacie Kusalich lived within a two-mile radius of her cousins in Fresno. She loved to draw and swim and learned to scuba dive with her cousins this summer.
“Everything she learned, she loved to do,” her grandmother recalled. “She was excited about life.”
Her father, Nathan, Sara’s brother, was raising her as a single dad.
“Kacie was Nathan’s life,” Graham said. “He gave her everything he had.”
Family members are thankful for the memories they made at family reunions and events this summer.
“It’s almost like they were told what would you do if you had six months to live? They lived life to the fullest this year,” Espy said. “They lived life to the fullest and they shared life to the fullest.”
It comforts her to know that her last words to her daughter were “I love you.”
After the accident, a gaping hole was left in their family. For many in the same position, the holiday season would be ruined.
Instead, the family gathered together and honored them.
“We planned Christmas the way Sara planned Christmas,” Espy said.
They held it at her home in Fresno as it was originally planned. They stayed up half the night wrapping gifts and had their traditional breakfast the next morning.
“There was joy and there were tears,” Espy said. “It was difficult but we knew they were looking down on us.”
Graham and her sister Amy were going through Sara’s Christmas gifts when they came across an ornament she was going to give Matthew this year.
“Sara wasn’t done with her Christmas wrapping,” Graham said. “We just happened to find that ornament.”
The ornament was of a pilot in a plane. Written on the tail is: “Heaven Bound.”
NTSB Investigating Plane Crash
The plane crash that killed four family members from Fresno is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, but final results may not be available for a year. However, mechanical failure may be ruled out as early as the end of January, NTSB officials said.
According to NTSB air safety investigator Nicole Charnon, the weather is suspected to be behind the accident.
“We had reports that the weather was pretty bad and that visual flight rules would not be recommended,” she said. “The pilot was a private pilot. He was not instrument rated. The weather brief reported that he did not recommend flying under (visual flight rules).”
The aircraft is in Sacramento where investigators will examine it beginning next month to determine if everything was working properly.
The investigation will also determine whether or not Armstrong violated FAA rules for flying under instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) without certification.
“If we do find that a regulation was busted, the pilot paid the ultimate price,” Charnon said. “But that hasn’t been determined yet.”
According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Foundation’s 2004 Nall report, about 76 percent of fatal general aviation accidents are pilot-related.
More than 70 percent of weather-related accidents resulted in fatalities in 2003 – and 87.5 percent occurred when pilots flying under visual flight rules (VFR) were in instrument meteorological conditions.
“The plane was only about 150 feet from the top of the mountain. I think they were turning around to come back,” Sara’s mother Helen Espy said. “I feel like they got up there, thought, ‘Nah, we don’t want to chance it.”
