Isle flying was ambulance
pilot’s dream
Pilot Ron Laubacher was living his dream of flying in Hawaii.
The son of a pilot father and a flight attendant mother, he had always wanted to fly, said his sister, Pam Swigert.
The 38-year-old California native wanted to settle in Hawaii, where his father flew as a Western and Delta airlines pilot and the family often vacationed.
"He was doing what he wanted to," Swigert said. "He loved the company and the people he worked with. He was just really happy."
Laubacher died Saturday when the Hawaii Air Ambulance plane he was piloting crashed on the Big Island, also killing two paramedics, Mandy Shiraki, 47, and J. Daniel Villiaros, 39.
After two days of searching, rescuers found the wreckage Monday in a heavily forested area on the slopes of Mauna Kea, about 22 miles northwest of Hilo.
Two National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived on the Big Island yesterday to begin an investigation into what caused the crash. Investigators spent about four hours at the crash site, but the investigation was expected to continue for several days.
"We just did the initial survey of the accident site," Howard Plagens of the NTSB said.
The plane's wreckage will eventually be removed from the steep crash site and likely will be taken to Hilo Airport.
Swigert flew to Hawaii Saturday and joined her mother, Ruth Laubacher, who lives in Honolulu.
The family received little information, so Swigert and three of her brother's neighbors flew to the Big Island Monday morning to backpack to the crash site.
When they landed, they were hit with the bad news. Rescue personnel told her the three men died instantly.
"That's what we assumed, and that's what we want to believe," she said.
Ruth Laubacher, who was extremely close to her son, wanted to see him one final time, just to touch him.
"It's devastating; you don't get that kind of closure," Swigert said.
She said her brother had never had any flying accidents.
Laubacher moved to Hawaii about five years ago from Las Vegas, where he got his start flying Grand Canyon tours in the early 1990s, Swigert said.
Laubacher then flew interisland flights for a small company before joining Hawaii Air Ambulance four years ago, and had logged a total 8,000 flight hours.
Lenora Low, a transport nurse at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children who has flown with Laubacher for the past four years, said: "Ron was an excellent pilot. He's always been competent, knowledgeable and erred on the side of caution."
Star-Bulletin reporter Rod Thompson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.