Sitting on Smith's lap is her 6-year-old son, Cody, who, like everyone else in this party of 12, had no inkling that their lives were about to change forever.
"They went down the slide and didn't come up," Thea vonAppen recalled yesterday. "I thought, 'What the hell is going on?' I kept waiting and waiting for what seemed like an eternity for them to surface. When they finally did, I knew they were in trouble."
In an instant, she went down the slide to help her son. As soon as she hit the water, she realized that danger was all around her.
"We were shot under the rocks," vonAppen said. "I was thinking, 'Oh my God, my son is going to drown and there's nothing I can do about it.' But Shannon and Cody were so calm. He kept telling Cody to swim and to keep his head above the water. Shannon was wonderful with him.
"I yelled out to my husband (University of Hawaii head football coach Fred vonAppen) that we were in trouble. He jumped in and immediately knew we were all fighting for our lives. Shannon and I kept handing Cody off -- back and forth to each other.
"We just kept going under and fighting our way back to the surface. I would go down and try to push Cody back up. Shannon held him up out of the water, and he got tired. There was nothing to cling to, no rocks, not anything. I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm dead and my son is going to die.' It was the most helpless feeling I've ever had."
Shannon Smith
Thea vonAppen recalled the Saturday outing that ended in tragedy when Smith drowned, as UH players and coaches held a brief meeting yesterday. They decided to delay the start of spring training for one day in honor of Smith, who would have celebrated his 21st birthday today.
"Shannon helped keep Cody calm the entire time," Thea vonAppen said. "Only when Tim (Carey, UH quarterback) had him and we knew he was safe, he asked Tim, 'Are we going to die?' I still don't think Cody realizes exactly what happened.
"All I know is I was sucked down again after Tim got Cody. He shot by us and grabbed Cody by the arm ... I managed to come up, and grab a branch that my daughter (Kristan) and her boyfriend had. They dragged me out."
Thea vonAppen remembers UH junior safety Chris Shinnick started yelling, "Where's Shannon?"
Nobody knew.
"Everybody was focusing on Cody," Thea vonAppen said. "Shannon and I were never more than two inches apart. I could feel him. He never said anything while Cody was being pulled out. After a few seconds, Chris started shredding towels and Fred told him to stop. It wouldn't do any good for him to jump in and drown too."
"Coach vonAppen probably saved my life," Shinnick said. "You feel so helpless just standing up there and hoping he would come up. I think Shannon got tired holding Cody out of the water. We started concentrating on Cody and forgot about Shannon because we figured everybody could get out on their own.
"Mrs. vonAppen was saying she felt like she was three seconds away from death. When we figured out where Shannon should be, I was the last person to see Shannon go under for the final time. It was too late. There was nothing we could do at that point."
Carey said the vonAppens' son was the calmest of all.
"He didn't try to fight anybody," Carey said. "He didn't panic. I could tell everyone was in trouble. I was fortunate to grab Cody and get him out in time. Sometimes when I think back on it, I think it lasted about two minutes, then again, it might not have been that long. Maybe only 30 seconds."
Fred vonAppen said Smith and Carey were instrumental in saving his son's life. He was still distraught yesterday afternoon.
The UH head coach said funeral services for Smith will be from 1 to 3 p.m. April 9.
Thea vonAppen said she can never thank the Smiths enough for their son risking his life for her child. Having to wait for the paramedics to arrive and retrieve the body was difficult, but having to tell Shannon Smith's parents -- Norbert and Rosemary -- hours later was even worse.
"She had been out shopping for Shannon's birthday present," Thea vonAppen said. "She didn't want to believe it. I think now how Shannon was so full of life. He loved to sky dive, to kayak. He was always right out front."
After it was apparent that Smith had drowned, the vonAppens called 911. Because Smith had been their guide, they weren't exactly sure where they were.
"When they finally found us, the scuba divers went down into the pool to see if they could find him," vonAppen said. "They were exhausted just looking for him. They found him about 90 minutes later. All of us were stunned."
So were several players attending yesterday's meeting, including punter Eric Hannum, who said he would wear Smith's number on his helmet next year, and former place-kicker Carlton Oswalt.
"Let me tell you, brother, Shannon was going to be a star," Oswalt said. "He had a strong leg. I was going to work with him this spring to help with his technique.
"I remember the first day he walked on. As a kicker, you're always careful when another kicker comes along. But Shannon was really good about it. He was polite and willing to listen. We're going to miss him -- for his ability and him as a person."
Once something of a tourist attraction, it is now the kind of place that only locals know.
Casual sightseers are discouraged by five miles of rough road -- blocked first by a locked gate and later by a wire cable -- and a 20-minute walk through ferns, scrubby trees and brush.
The slide, closed to the public 18 years ago, is one of Kauai's unique natural spots, a place that Shannon Smith, who was raised in nearby Kapaa, knew well.
Smith, a 20-year-old University of Hawaii football player, was the 10th person in 35 years to drown in the swirling waters of the so-called "bottomless pool" that forms beneath the natural slide in Waipahee Stream.
Firefighters said heavy rains, like those experienced on Kauai for several days before Smith and his companions hiked in, can cause a strong whirlpool to form in the deep pool beneath the slide. The stream and pool, nestled within a forest reserve above Anahola, are also prone to flash flooding.
Those types of hazards, coupled with crime and problems maintaining the remote site, prompted the state to close the slide in 1979. Lihue Plantation Co., which owns the land, had wanted to close it 15 years earlier because of liability hazards.
The state, although absolved of guilt in a lawsuit filed by the families of three Oahu teens who drowned in the pool in 1971, decided to close high-risk areas like the slide. When the state pulled out, Lihue Plantation erected the gates and stopped maintaining the access road.
Some hunters and ranchers who lease the abandoned cane land for pasture have keys to the gate, although Lihue Planation Co. attorney Tamara Edwards said the land "has always been private property and it's intended to be maintained as private property."
Still, she said, gates and warning signs don't always keep people out. "Lihue Plantation owns thousands of acres on Kauai and we try to limit access, but it's virtually impossible to keep trespassers out of that much land. You can't fence it all or close it all off."