LAKE WORTH, Florida (18 Apr 2006) -- Inside a yellow bungalow where multi-colored Christmas lights and poofy silk flowers frame the front window, Elsie Oquist endures the agonizing task of sifting through her daughter's home. "It hurts," she says, fighting tears. A few miles away, Pamela Zimmerman struggles with a similar task of clearing out her office, the Lantana Chiropractic Center that was owned by Dr. Robert Strauss, 37. Zimmerman was Strauss' office manager. Eight months ago, she introduced him to her best friend, Cynthia Oquist, 35. The two had been together ever since and on Saturday were scuba diving over the Gulf Stream reef near the Boynton Inlet. Both were certified divers but drowned after getting tangled in the rope that was connected to an orange float on the surface that lets boaters know divers are below. Strauss got tangled in the rope first and Oquist floated to the surface to call for help, authorities said. Then she dove back down about 45 feet to try to help Strauss but also got tangled in the rope. A rescue party including other divers who were in the area found the couple drifting near the ocean floor more than an hour later. Zimmerman, mourning the loss of two close friends, wishes she could have been there the instant Oquist decided to go back under. "To tell her to let go of him," Zimmerman said, crying. Many certified divers expressed the same sentiment Monday and said that as hard as it might have been for Oquist to leave her boyfriend, she should have gone for help, rather than try to help him. "Underwater, problems have a tendency to compound themselves," said Roger Davis, a diving instructor who owns Wet Pleasures Dive Outfitters, located next to Strauss' office. He was one of the divers who helped search for the couple. One of the problems divers noticed after they found the couple was that Strauss' diving vest, which would help him float to the surface, was ripped at the shoulder, rendering it useless, Davis said. It also appears that Strauss and Oquist unspooled too much rope between themselves and the orange float, leaving several feet of loose rope swirling in the light currents that they later got tangled in, Davis said. | | They each had enough air in their dive tanks to last about an hour, leading divers to assume that the couple panicked. The tragedy has shocked many who knew Strauss and Oquist, both of whom were described by friends as generous. For Oquist's longtime friend Alexandra Reiner, the pain comes from losing a friend who gave so much of herself to everyone around her. "She collected money for a friend who had cancer," Reiner said. "She bought Christmas presents for the immigrants' children in the neighborhood who didn't have money and also helped translate important letters for their parents." Oquist, who worked in the legal department of PAX TV's West Palm Beach office, learned Spanish from her Puerto Rican mother, Swedish from her Swedish father and taught herself Portuguese. When she named her German shepherd-Labrador mix, she picked the Swedish words for "little girl," calling the dog Flicka. Strauss was a father to two little girls. He placed a walk-in plastic doll house in his front yard for them and bolted swings to the sturdiest branches of the two trees in his front yard west of Lantana. Friends want to remember his zest to make people happy. He did it by being a friend and doctor to his patients and by entertaining crowds at bars in downtown Lake Worth with his rock band, Zimmerman said. "He wanted to heal the world," Zimmerman said. SCUBA FORUMDISCUSS THIS TOPIC - Dive in and have your say at Scuba Forum |
