Valley helicopter crash victims were united in their love of nature

They were three very different men.

Kevin O’Connor was the motivator — overseeing a staff of more than a dozen biologists and field workers with enthusiasm and ambition. Clu Cotter was the athletic and adventurous wanderer — ready to take a detour at any moment just for the fun of it. Tom Stolberg was the eccentric jack-of-all trades — dabbling in everything from cooking to medieval warfare to sewing.

But they also had one thing in common: a love for the outdoors and a fascination with wildlife.

They worked in the Fresno office of the California Department of Fish and Game — which is responsible for 12 counties in Central California — and were three of the office’s four wildlife specialists. They were tracking deer herds on Jan. 5 when their helicopter clipped a power line and crashed into the base of a large tree, killing them. The pilot, 70-year-old Dennis Donovan of Palm Springs, also died.

The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to issue a preliminary report on the accident this week.

Family members and colleagues in the tight-knit Fish and Game office — which is often described as a family itself — are grieving their loss. But they take some comfort in knowing that the men died doing what they loved best: embracing adventure.

Here are their stories.

Cotter: An ‘adventurous spirit’

When Ed Reagan, an avid cyclist, wanted to take an all-night trip into the foothills near Tollhouse, he knew who to call: his friend Clu Cotter. It was going to be a full moon, he told Cotter; so why not bike up there at dusk and come back down at night? Cotter didn’t hesitate. He was in.

Cotter, 48, was trim, fit and curly haired. He was a devoted family man who always had a calm demeanor, his friends say.

But he was no desk jockey. With “legs like a locomotive,” as one friend put it, Cotter was well-known in the Central Valley bicycling community as one of the area’s most competitive mountain and distance bikers.

A 90-mile day trip from the Valley floor to Grant Grove in Kings Canyon National Park? Cotter was up for it. A 10-day romp around Belgium tracing the country’s famous biking routes? That was Cotter’s idea. A trip to Oregon to compete in a muddy and grueling cyclocross race — Cotter was there.

“When you looked down at your cell phone and saw that it was Clu, you smiled because you knew an adventure was coming,” Reagan said.

During a hike up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in July 1985, Cotter used his outdoor survival skills to help rescue a group of hikers caught in a lighting storm, according to Cotter’s longtime friend Jim Ryan and a Bee story about the incident. Two of the hikers in the group were killed by a lightning strike and three others were injured. Cotter and his friends helped keep the survivors warm until helicopters rescued them around midnight.

Cotter grew up in Marin County and graduated in 1990 from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a degree in ecology and systematic biology. He moved to the Valley to work as a wildlife technician for the U.S. Forest Service. He later conducted endangered species surveys and led habitat restoration projects for the state Department of Water Resources. In 1999, he joined Fish and Game as an associate wildlife biologist.

Cotter spent much of his time working in the eastern Fresno County foothills and mountains studying deer and rare carnivores such as the Sierra red fox, said Jeff Single, manager of Fish and Game’s Fresno office. Any chance to hike, ski or bike to some distant spot was welcome news to Cotter.

“He was the guy who, if we had a deer video tower come off in some remote area, he would go up there to fix it,” Single said.

That was typical of Cotter, said his longtime friend Luis Huerta.

“He often would look for those tasks that would feed his adventurous spirit,” said Huerta, who had known Cotter since 1990 and is now a public policy professor at Columbia University in New York City.

Cotter was married to Marni Cotter and had two sons, Ren, 12, and Jamie, 10. The family lives in Fresno. Ren also was passionate about cycling, and the two often would spend time together on biking routes.

“The thing I just keep thinking about is that since he rode with his boy so much, who’s going to teach him how to change his tires or fix his bike?” Reagan said.

O’Connor: ‘A born leader’

His enthusiasm was contagious.

Kevin O’Connor, 40, was younger than many of the 15 people he supervised at the Fresno Fish and Game office. But he was so well-liked in the office and his can-do attitude was so appealing, no one seemed to mind.

“Kevin was a born leader,” said Eric Kleinfelter, who worked for O’Connor for four years and knew him for more than a decade. The two also played on the same bowling team and Fish and Game softball team.

O’Connor, who was baby-faced and had a big smile, was part problem-solver, part biologist and part supervisor. He didn’t believe in managing from behind a desk and often jumped at the opportunity to help out his staff in the field, sometimes hopping in his truck and driving for hours to lend a hand. Two of the people he supervised were Cotter and Stolberg.

“Kevin had a tremendous passion for his work,” said Single, the regional manager.

O’Connor also had a keen interest in spotting wolverines, which until recently were thought to be extinct in California, said his co-worker, Gary Schales.

Once, according to another co-worker, Greg Gerstenberg, O’Connor had to shoot a bear with a tranquilizer dart. When the bear fell face-down in a puddle and stopped breathing, O’Connor administered CPR — mouth-to-snout resuscitation — to save its life.

After graduating in 1993 from the University of California at Davis, with a degree in wildlife and fisheries biology, O’Connor worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Central and Northern California, conducting field studies of spotted owls, pine martens, fishers and other critters. He joined Fish and Game as a wildlife biologist in 1997 and worked on timber harvest plans and great gray owl studies. He was promoted to senior wildlife biologist in 2005 and became responsible for wildlife management in nine counties.

O’Connor was married to Keri, who lives in Clovis, and was the father of three girls — Kayleigh, 11, Michelle, 11, and McKenna, 8 — and one son, Aidan, 5. His son is autistic, Kleinfelter said. Though it made parenting a challenge, O’Connor wasn’t discouraged by his son’s disability.

“He dealt with that positively,” Kleinfelter said. “He was a devoted husband and loved to spend time with his wife and children.”

Stolberg: ‘A walking encyclopedia’

When Tom Stolberg was an infant, his family would drive from Fresno out to the foothills, hike outdoors, and set up a playpen so he could enjoy the fresh air without — as his mother put it — “rolling into the river.”

The outdoors have always been important to the Stolbergs. Both his father and brother achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. His sister is sometimes the only woman on large hunting trips.

At the Stolberg home, “we always had chickens and pigs and horses, turkeys, ducks — you name it, we had it,” said Tom Stolberg’s mother, Martha Stolberg.

So it was no surprise that Tom Stolberg grew up loving the outdoors. He joined the Boy Scouts at 12 and went on to become an Eagle Scout. But his interests weren’t limited to nature.

He dabbled in a little bit of everything: wrestling, sewing, gardening, cooking, studying World War II history, re-enacting medieval warfare battles, and making cordial — a type of alcoholic drink with medieval roots. His shelves were stacked with books on history, ships and guns.

“He was a walking encyclopedia,” Martha Stolberg said. “He could give you a lecture on any subject matter.”

Tom Stolberg, blue-eyed and almost always sporting sideburns, graduated from Clovis High, where he participated on the wrestling team. He went on to earn a degree in history from California State University, Humboldt, in 2003 and was hired as a scientific aide at Fish and Game in 2004.

Stolberg answered the phones and took questions from the public, worked on wildlife habitat projects, conducted deer surveys, and organized hunting trips, including some for disabled hunters.

Outside of work, Stolberg remained active in the Boy Scouts, leading teenagers on five-day trips through Yosemite National Park. He was also a member of the the Society for Creative Anachronism, which recreates the arts and crafts of medieval Europe and re-enacts battles in homemade armor.

Tom Stolberg was close to his brother, Buck, and his sister, Sarah.

When they were kids, the brothers once captured a wounded squirrel, nursed it back to health, and let it loose. As college students, they joined their sister and mother on a monthlong tour of China in 2002 — staying at $5-a-night youth hostels and eating food from street vendors.

Those were the unforgettable adventures, Martha Stolberg said. But there were also the everyday memories of her son that she says she will always cherish.

“Tom was a wonderful son,” she said. “If I called home and said I’m late, he would ask me what I wanted for dinner and he’d have it ready for me. And if I came home grumpy and tired, he’d put his arm around me and say, ‘You go lie down and I’ll get dinner.’

“He was that way with everybody.”

By Chris Collins / The Fresno Bee