CAVE CREEK, Ariz. (AP) – Maria Raya-Garcia almost didn’t get the weekend off to celebrate her birthday beside a popular swimming hole in Arizona.
The bosses at El Encanto Mexican restaurant in Cave Creek, a touristy Wild West-style town outside Phoenix, didn’t want the popular prep cook to be gone during their busiest days, but they finally relented.
Raya-Garcia was celebrating her 27th birthday Saturday, lounging with family members in a rocky canyon north of Phoenix when a flash flood roared down a placid creek and swept them away.
Searchers later found her lifeless body, along with those of her three young children, her mother, sister and other members of her family.
In mere seconds, Mother Nature had ravaged the extended family with roots in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, leaving nine confirmed dead. Authorities say they believe a body found Wednesday is that of her husband, Hector Miguel Garnica.