Surfer dies after collapse at San Onofre
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A 22-year-old man from Glendora died Saturday after losing consciousness while surfing at San Onofre State Beach.
Two surfers carried Ryan Neilsom out of the ocean about 10 a.m., said Kevin Cook, a dispatcher at the San Clemente State Beach Lifeguards. Neilsom was still alive and had a weak pulse. The lifeguards tried to use a defibrillator to save him, said Harold William Nickels, lifeguard supervisor at San Onofre.
Neilsom died at 11:35 a.m. at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in San Clemente, said Supervising Deputy Coroner Leslie Meader. An autopsy is to be performed today.
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Our prayers go out to his family!
Glendora man dies suddenly
By Fred Ortega Staff Writer
GLENDORA - Ryan Neilson wasn't about to let a debilitating, lifelong illness stop him.
By the time he was 22 years old, Neilson, a lifelong Glendora resident, had earned honors playing on his high school football team and gone solo skydiving, and earned his associate's degree in arts from Citrus College despite suffering from juvenile diabetes since age 3.
On Saturday morning, he was about to try another daredevil sport for the first time: surfing, at San Onofre State Beach. He suddenly lost consciousness while paddling out with friends to catch his first wave, and was pronounced dead at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center a little more than an hour later, despite desperate attempts to revive him at the scene by lifeguards and an off-duty paramedic. The suddenness of Neilson's death shocked his mother and stepfather, Katherine and Addison Bachman.
"He was basically a case study for his doctor, a foremost endocrinologist at City of Hope, since he was three, and he had just gotten a checkup and got the best results in his life," said Addison Bachman, whose stepson Ryan had tattooed "Ryan Neilson-Bachman" to his arm in a sign of love and respect for his second father. "We just don't know, but something strange happened, very quickly."
Orange County coroner's investigator Kelly Crawford said an autopsy was performed on Neilson Sunday, but that the results were being withheld pending further investigation. Bachman said coroner's officials told him they had found no obvious cause of death, and that further pathology tests would be completed within six to eight weeks.
At the Bachman home on Inverness Avenue in Glendora, a steady stream of family and friends continued to pour in on Sunday, united in shock and grief.
"He was a go-getter, a great kid, had great grades," said Katherine Bachman of her son, who was planning to attend Cal Poly Pomona in the fall to study biotechnology.
"He wore an insulin pump, and he hoped to one day work on bettering the technologies that had helped him so much throughout his life," Katherine Bachman added. "We never stopped him from doing anything he wanted to do. He developed a seizure disorder related to his diabetes at age seven, but we weren't about to let that disease rule his life."
Nick Smith, one of Neilson's best friends, had known him since fourth grade and had played football with him on the Glendora High School team.
"He was a loyal, friend," said Smith, 22, who graduated with Neilson in 2002. "He was the kind of guy you could never be mad at."
Another good friend, Nick Vega, characterized Neilson as "the hardest-working person" he had ever known.
"You always looked to him to stick it through, and everything he did was 100 percent, 100 percent of the time, and we loved him for that," said Vega, 22. He also had a big heart, said Breanna Rodriguez, 23, who worked with Neilson for two years at Vons in Glendora.
"He was the type of guy who, when I was eight months pregnant and nobody wanted anything to do with me, he took me to the movies to see `Star Wars,"' Rodriguez said. Besides his parents, Neilson is survived by a younger brother, Addison Bachman Jr., 16. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at Finkbiner Park in Glendora.
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