Medevac Helicopter Crash Off Catalina Island Kills Pilot, Flight Nurse and Patient

AVALON, Calif. — A medical transport helicopter crashed into the Pacific Ocean moments after lifting off from this Catalina Island harbor town on the night of Sept. 30, killing the pilot, a flight nurse and the patient they were ferrying to a mainland hospital, and setting off a search that stretched into the next evening before Los Angeles County divers recovered the last body from the wreckage.

The REACH Air Medical Services helicopter, an Airbus H135 (the aircraft long known as the Eurocopter EC135), had just picked up a 45-year-old Avalon woman suffering a severe allergic reaction when it went down about 7:50 p.m. roughly a fifth of a nautical mile offshore of Pebbly Beach, according to a Coast Guard situation report. Baywatch Avalon, the Los Angeles County Fire Department's island lifeguard unit, alerted the Coast Guard's Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach command center within minutes.

Two of the five people aboard were pulled from the water that night and could not be revived: pilot Steven "Steve" Robinson, 59, a former U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot who had once flown Marine One, and flight nurse Jessica deVries, 49, of Menifee, a nearly two-decade veteran of trauma and critical-care nursing. A second flight nurse and the patient's adult son, who had come aboard as her translator, were rescued and hospitalized in stable condition. The patient herself, identified by relatives and later by the coroner's office as Catalina Hernandez, was not located for almost a full day.

The numbers

The wreckage came to rest roughly 218 feet down. Coast Guard and Los Angeles County Fire Department and Sheriff's Department crews searched more than 156 square miles of water over a combined 23 hours, deploying a Coast Guard Air Station Ventura MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, a 45-foot response boat, lifeguard boats from three Baywatch stations and sheriff's dive teams before locating Hernandez's body inside the submerged helicopter. The search formally ended at 5:44 p.m. Thursday. Separately, NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration began tracking the roughly 131 gallons of jet fuel the aircraft was carrying as a potential pollution threat.

How the flight unfolded

The helicopter had departed Oceanside in San Diego County that evening, a roughly 24-minute flight across the channel, to pick up Hernandez on the island after she fell ill at work. Hernandez, a longtime Avalon resident, had worked as a housekeeper on the island for more than two decades and was the mother of three sons. Because she needed a translator, her adult son climbed aboard alongside the three-person REACH crew — pilot, nurse and flight paramedic — for the short flight back across the San Pedro Channel to a Los Angeles-area trauma center. The aircraft crashed into the ocean within moments of taking off.

Air-ambulance flights like this one are a routine lifeline for Catalina Island, where roughly 4,000 year-round residents and a seasonal flood of visitors depend on helicopters and boats for anything beyond basic medical care, since the island's small clinic cannot treat serious trauma or severe allergic reactions. REACH, part of the national Global Medical Response network, is one of several operators that fly those transports daily up and down the California coast. The crash was the second fatal accident involving a REACH aircraft in less than a year: in October 2025, a REACH helicopter lost power and crash-landed on a Sacramento freeway shortly after leaving a hospital heliport, injuring its three crew members; one of them, a flight nurse, died of her injuries days later.

Who is affected

The crash reverberated well beyond Avalon's harbor. REACH, in its statement, described Robinson as devoted to his family and community; he was a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot who had flown Marine One, the presidential helicopter, before his civilian flying career. DeVries's son, Gavin, said his mother "loved what she did, and we will forever remember her for her strength." Hernandez's relatives said she had spent two decades caring for others on the island and leaves behind three sons.

REACH's parent company, Global Medical Response, said in a statement that surviving flight paramedic Brad Sparks was recovering, and that it had activated critical-incident stress counseling and therapy-dog support for crews across its network, many of whom fly similar medevac routes over open water along the California coast.

"Their work often happens out of public view, but their impact is measured in lives touched, families comforted, and communities served," Sean Russell, REACH's Pacific region president, said in the company's statement.

What people are saying

Coast Guard officials emphasized the scale of the joint response. "We are grateful for the professionalism, coordination and dedication of our Los Angeles County partners, whose efforts have been critical to maintaining a unified and effective response," said Capt. Stacey Crecy, commander of Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach, in the agency's statement announcing the search's end. "While this is a tragedy felt deeply by the families and community, I am reassured by the speed and determination with which our responders have come together."

What happens next

The National Transportation Safety Board, with assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration, is leading the investigation into what caused the aircraft to go down so soon after takeoff. Investigators were expected to examine maintenance records, weather conditions and radar and flight-tracking data, along with the wreckage itself once it is recovered from the seafloor; a preliminary report typically takes several weeks to surface, with a final determination of probable cause often taking a year or more. REACH said it would cooperate fully with investigators while supporting its employees' families. For the roughly 4,000 residents of Catalina Island, the crash is also expected to prompt renewed attention to the reliability of the emergency air transport that connects the island to mainland hospitals.