Retired Sheriff's Deputy Dies On Dive Off Sonoma Coast

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - A woman died over the weekend while out on a diving trip with members of Sacramento's dive rescue team, including her husband.

Terri Collentine is missed. Her diving death is a mystery.

"Something happened, there's an unknown," Bob Erickson said. "There's an unknown somewhere that we just don't know."

Erickson is president of the volunteer Sacramento Drowning Accident Response Team, or DART. He last saw her at a DART open house Saturday.

"It is a weird irony," he said.

Terri left for what would be her final dive trip to Ocean Cove in Sonoma County.

She was an expert diver among experts. Terri was with her husband Jim, DART's chief of operations, and their friend Hohn Mohammed, the chief of training for DART. She and her husband are both retired sheriff's deputies.

"We tell people all the time it doesn't always happen to someone else and we're learning that firsthand today because it happened to us," Erickson said.

The three went in for a dive Sunday morning.

"There was a little kelp bed they said to the right of the cove, so the plan was to snorkel out around that kelp bed," Erickson said.

But Terri began flailing her arms. She was in distress.

"They towed her to shore," Erickson said. "Once they got her to shore they could see she wasn't breathing."

A woman who loved life and loved to dive was suddenly dead while surrounded by an expert rescue team and a husband who's now full of despair.

"As you can imagine, he's lost," Erickson said.