Alta Journal is pleased to present the third installment of a six-part series by writer Benjamin Cassidy. Each week, we’ll publish online the next portion of “The Ripples of Mutiny Bay.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading, and sign up here to be notified by email when each new installment is available.
The seaplane is an icon of the Pacific Northwest. Small aircraft launch and land regularly on the placid waters that lap against its major cities and destination isles, serving as quaint reminders of both the region’s rich aviation history and its majestic, fragmented geography. But on Labor Day weekend in 2022, in the most tranquil of settings, one such aircraft ferried its passengers to the most tragic of ends. Shortly after takeoff from idyllic San Juan Island, a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter bound for the Seattle area nose-dived into Puget Sound, killing all 10 people and an unborn baby on board.
The flight carried a remarkably eclectic group of passengers, among them a seasoned civil rights activist, a popular winemaker, and a young lawyer. Their deaths sent shock waves up and down the entire West Coast, from Southern California to the northwest corner of Washington State, and as far as Minnesota. Who were these people, and what can we learn from their lives—and their deaths? In Part Two, Cassidy told the story of Ross Mickel, Lauren Hilty, their son, Remy, and their unborn child, Luca.
Nearly three years after Ross Mickel and Lauren Hilty walked down the aisle at the Roche Harbor Resort on San Juan Island, a 29-year-old lawyer from Seattle named Gabby Hanna arrived at the same waterfront location for a wedding.
Though distant from the population center of Washington State, the historic venue, with its regal hotel built in 1886 surrounded by abundant gardens, is a veritable vow factory during the warmer months of the year.
Still, traveling to Roche Harbor from Seattle can be a chore for those who don’t own the yachts docked in its bay. Located in the northwest corner of the island, just north of the English camp where the British waited out the Pig War, the small community is about a 20-minute drive from the Washington State Ferries terminal in Friday Harbor. Nabbing vehicle reservations aboard the few boats traveling to or from the mainland often requires planning and foresight. At a minimum, it means arriving at least 30 minutes before scheduled departures, which are often delayed. All told, a one-hour crossing can easily become a three-and-a-half-hour odyssey each way during the summer rush.
Which is why, when Hanna told her parents she was attending a law school friend’s wedding on San Juan Island that holiday weekend, they advised her to avoid the ferry: She should take a floatplane instead.
A week before the wedding, Hanna’s parents, Dave and Marcie von Beck, had flown in a seaplane to the San Juan Islands for a kayaking trip with friends. It was a smooth experience, and they expected the same for her. The operator, Friday Harbor Seaplanes, took off a short distance from their home on Lake Washington in South Seattle, and, in Hanna’s case, it would deposit her right on the dock in Roche Harbor a mere 50 minutes later; she wouldn’t need to arrange for a car once she arrived.
The logic appealed to the rising attorney, who was already a little frustrated to be traveling alone. Her closest friend from law school, Vicky Wei, couldn’t make the wedding, and her own budding relationship hadn’t yet advanced to plus-one territory.
The cost of the flight wouldn’t be an issue. While the sight of small planes elsewhere might conjure thoughts of wealthy jet-setters, a constellation of commuter floatplanes around Seattle regularly transport a broader spectrum of society; most flights to the San Juans were priced south of $200 one-way.
Her decision to take the easy route, to travel over the Salish Sea instead of across it, carried with it the irony that her first 29 years were in part distinguished by both her remarkable endurance and being in the water. As a child, she and her sister, Jordan, swam competitively for clubs around Seattle. Jordan had 14 months and some speed on her, but Gabby, with a mop of curly hair she’d tie back in a bun, eventually excelled in the sport. The sisters attended Garfield High School, an athletic powerhouse that counts musicians Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones among its former students. The Hannas helped propel the Bulldogs to the upper echelon of the state rankings.
Like her sister, Gabby kept swimming after graduation, joining the team at Occidental College in Los Angeles while bolstering her bona fides for law school applications. Her stepfather, Dave, was an attorney and inspired her interest in the field. At the dinner table when they were little girls, he’d pretend Gabby and Jordan were witnesses, playfully questioning them for hours. Jordan eventually tired of the game, but Gabby couldn’t get enough. “Let’s do depositions!” she’d say on rides home from swim meets.
At the University of Washington School of Law, Hanna’s determination stood out at the Washington Law Review, where she ultimately served as executive managing editor. In the Law Review’s office, adjacent to the school’s library, she spent hours studying, as well as reading submissions, editing articles, and checking citations for the résumé-boosting legal journal; one of her own pieces was even selected for publication. But her peers didn’t perceive just an academic doggedness in Hanna. Gavin Keene, the Law Review’s then–chief online editor, noted her genuine, unrelenting interest in personal connection in the competitive milieu of aspiring lawyers. And Wei, who met her at a happy hour before orientation, observed almost immediately that the opinionated but intensely engaged Hanna could make anyone feel like she was their best friend.
In Wei’s case, it was true. The close friends holed up in the office by the library, where Wei worked on the Washington International Law Journal, and shared many meals at hole-in-the-wall joints in the U District. Their gastronomic risk-taking became a kind of ritual. Before final exams, they ate conveyor-belt sushi from one spot near campus where other students, they’d heard, had contracted food poisoning. “We’re doing this,” they said the first time, and a daring tradition was born.
Hanna’s adventurousness extended to her travels. As a 12-year-old, she mapped out a family walking tour in Italy, learning some Italian beforehand. When the family arrived at a walled city at dusk without lodging, Gabby managed to secure an apartment for them from some locals. In college, she flew to Ireland in part because she wanted to spend Christmas in Killarney. And during her second year at UW, not content with merely competing in Hong Kong along with the rest of the school’s Moot Court Honor Board, she added a solo backpacking trip in Vietnam.
Her family and friends came to understand her audaciousness as part of her happy confidence. Though generously listed at five foot seven at Occidental, she always felt like she was meeting significantly taller dates at eye level. “Whenever I’m looking at a guy, I always just think like, Yeah, we’re the same height,” she’d tell her family.
Wei noticed her friend’s self-assuredness when they talked about their futures. Hanna was several years younger than Wei, but her plan was more focused: She wanted to be an attorney, following in her stepfather’s footsteps.
But between her second and third years of law school, Hanna interned at an international firm, Cooley LLP, and grew enamored with defense litigation and the potentially high-stakes work of Big Law. She eventually accepted an offer from Cooley, though not in its Seattle office; after graduating from UW in 2018, Hanna headed to San Diego.
Her return to Southern California didn’t last long. Unlike some associates, she could handle the grueling culture of a big corporate firm, since that was what she’d signed up for, after all. She even found time to develop a pro bono practice helping victims of human trafficking clear their criminal records.
Instead, it was San Diego’s laid-back sprawl that wasn’t quite her speed. Beyond her class of associates, she hadn’t branched out much socially. And she yearned to be closer to her tight-knit family.
Her eventual transfer back to Seattle happened amid COVID-19, which brought with it social isolation. Even when the city gradually opened up again, the introverted tech types in her neighborhood—she’d moved into a high-rise in South Lake Union, near Amazon headquarters—always seemed glued to their phones, eyes down.
Back in the Pacific Northwest, Hanna was relishing more time with her family: playing games, cooking meals, and taking short trips with the sister she’d always cherished. Together they sipped wine in Woodinville and spent a winter break in British Columbia.
All the while, Hanna was establishing herself as a star in commercial litigation at Cooley. Her Palo Alto–based team reaped the rewards of the associate in Seattle who never stopped digging. The group worked on investigations into trade-secret disputes, insider trading, and accounting fraud. Partner Elizabeth Skey quickly learned that Hanna, the subject of so many imaginary depositions as a child, was an asset. Hanna could read clients’ employees and discern their degree of involvement or knowledge. She learned how well leaders did, or did not, in a crisis and, with Skey’s help, how to guide them through it.
Over time, Hanna and Skey’s work relationship grew into a genuine friendship. They met each other’s families on Zoom and shared travel plans. Skey was thrilled when, in the summer of 2022, Hanna left for another European adventure. She started in Italy, following the aquamarine coast from Capri and Positano down to Sicily before proceeding to Malta, where she dined at palaces and floated in a lagoon. “Mentally still OOO,” she posted on Instagram in early August.
Journeys of a different kind beckoned when she returned. That month, just before she flew to San Juan Island for her good friend Keene’s wedding, Hanna moved from South Lake Union to Ballard. Once a quiet seafaring village, the neighborhood several miles outside of Seattle’s commercial core now touted some of the city’s best restaurants and bars, attracting maturing millennials who wanted more residential space without giving up a good time. Wei, who’d lived there for years, had long raved about the area to Hanna; now, in the days after her friend’s move, she heard Hanna doing the same, newly energized.
Wei regretted that she couldn’t join Hanna in Roche Harbor, but she knew her bubbly friend wouldn’t have any trouble connecting with other guests. Sure enough, in the days after the wedding, Keene’s friends and family members could easily recount conversations with the vivacious lawyer in the black dress.
At the ceremony, white folding chairs lined a lawn in front of Hotel de Haro, the words across its façade paying homage to a Spanish explorer who sailed among the San Juans before the archipelago acquired its name. Hanna had explored the region by water once, too—about a decade earlier, kayaking with her mother. They spent some of the trip fighting extreme tides; even seemingly tranquil waters, it turned out, could still turn vicious. As always, Hanna endured.
The day after the wedding, Hanna let her mother know that she was going for a run before boarding the seaplane back to Lake Washington. Dave and Marcie von Beck were golfing that day but could pick her up, they told her. Hanna didn’t want to potentially interrupt their round; she said she could snag a car share. She was looking forward to car shopping when she got back—she’d just started test-driving some options with Jordan, who’d been watching her cat, a Bengal named Zoe, and sending her videos all weekend.
On her way out to the dock, Hanna passed Keene, who was eating lunch with his bride’s family. She smiled and waved at him as she walked toward the white plane with a red stripe and twin floats.
Since nearly all of the passengers, including Mickel and Hilty, were boarding at the plane’s next stop in Friday Harbor, Hanna had her pick of seats in the small cabin. Always up for adventure, she chose to sit in the cockpit next to the pilot, seemingly everything in front of her.•
Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading “The Ripples of Mutiny Bay” by Benjamin Cassidy, and sign up for email notifications when each new installment is available.
Benjamin Cassidy is a journalist and fiction writer. Formerly the features editor of Seattle Met, he has written for GQ, National Geographic, and Scientific American, among other publications, and has received awards from the National City and Regional Magazine Association and Society of Professional Journalists. After spending several years in the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in New England.
