Empire child who drowned is remembered for her bright spirit

“This necklace wasn’t Nataliey’s,” Lessa Leatherman said Monday morning, holding a rosary at a car wash to raise money for her 11-year-old daughter’s funeral. But the circumstances under which Leatherman was given the rosary will have her keep it close always, and always will make her think of her oldest child, she said.

Nataliey Garcia drowned Saturday afternoon during a family trip to the popular Rainbow Pools swimming area east of Groveland. That evening, her body was recovered by members of the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Dive Team.

After the child’s body was recovered, her aunt Sandra Leatherman was thanking a dive team member, who pressed the rosary into her palm and said something along the lines of, “We didn’t know if this was hers.”

“They thought they saw movement on the bottom of the water, and when they went down there, this necklace was glowing where they found Nataliey’s body,” Lessa Leatherman said, her voice choked with sorrow as she showed the plastic, glow-in-the-dark rosary. “... The dive team gave this to us; they brought it up with her. That was the most unreal thing.”

Rainbow Pools, along the south fork of the Tuolumne River, features a natural water slide of about 10 feet that shoots riders over the falls and down maybe 20 feet into the basin of water, said David Murphy, Nataliey’s stepfather. Approximately 100 people were enjoying the swimming area Saturday, he said, including many children who’d gone down before his family. “It was kid, kid, kid, kid, kid” he said in rapid succession, “and she was the only one something happened to.”

Nataliey’s group included about 10 adults and lots of children, including her siblings and cousins. Murphy was the first to go down the water slide and was surprised at the power of the water. “It grabbed me, pushed me out,” he said. He wasn’t hurt, but “I just landed crazy. ... I bellyflopped.”

Concerned about safety, he tried to wave off Lessa Leatherman from going, but she interpreted the wave as a signal to proceed. The quick slide was harder on her than on Murphy. “The water beat me up and I couldn’t get out of the water by myself. I could barely breathe and I hurt my leg really, really bad,” Leatherman said.

Nataliey apparently went down the slide while Murphy and Sandra Leatherman were tending to Lessa Leatherman. None of them saw her go or immediately knew something had happened to her.

When Murphy went up to bring the other kids down to the pools, Nataliey wasn’t there. Lessa Leatherman understands from family members who were with Nataliey that she was in position to slide but had second thoughts about doing so. “But if you get there, it’s taking you, whether you want to go or not,” her mother said. “She didn’t even sit down.”

“It pulled her off her feet,” Murphy finished.

Leatherman said her own rough ride in the water left her right side badly bruised. “I can only imagine what she went through going down that slide. ... Literally, the water pushes you. She never even came up, never had a hand come up above water.

“We don’t know if she bumped her head and was knocked out, if she got paralyzed on her way down. We don’t know none of this yet. She never had a fighting chance.”

While smaller children were wearing life jackets, Leatherman said, Nataliey was not because she was a “really excellent swimmer.”

Sgt. Andrea Benson, spokeswoman for the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, said there have been “injuries off and on throughout the years” at Rainbow Pools.

Any recreation in natural wilderness areas needs to be undertaken with extreme caution, she said. In a water feature, “you don’t know what the terrain is like below the surface.”

In a Facebook post Saturday, the Sheriff’s Office said many concerned people jumped into the water trying to find Nataliey, but were unsuccessful.

A Manteca resident, Cindy Underhile, posted on a gofundme page for Nataliey, “I have been coming to Rainbow Pools for 40 years and have seen a lot of serious injuries but never a drowning. My sons Nate and Jose tried desperately to save Nataliey, they know the rocks under the falls very well, but couldn’t get close enough to her. My whole family is heartbroken over this tragedy.”

In an email to The Bee on Tuesday night, Underhile added: This was very hard on my son as just 2 days prior, we were at the grave site of a 20-month-old boy, Charlie, who drowned five years ago. He was the son of Nate’s best friend and roommate. He took care of the baby from birth every day, and all he could see every time he dove into the water was Charlie’s face.

“I have been taking my son to Rainbow since he was in the womb and he jumped off the falls when he was 6 year old, while I tread water below waiting for him to jump. I can’t tell you how many times we have been to Rainbow, but it must be literally hundreds. Enough to have been behind the falls, under the falls and all around the falls and every rock in between. My son knew what rock lip (Nataliey) was trapped under but couldn’t reach her. He keep saying, ‘If I had more air or an air tank, I could get to her!’ It was heartbreaking – so tragic. ...

“Every member of my immediate family has saved someone from going over the falls. We started ‘staying’ at the top of the falls a long time ago, and as the years went by, that was what we did, make sure everyone stays safe. We’ve even gotten into it with folks just trying to educate them.

“Anyway, it’s a beautiful wonderland of Mother Earth’s splendor and we will continue to go, but I honestly think that the Internet has caused too many people to be there at one time. Eventually, they may have to monitor the amount of people. That day, it was overcrowded – possibly the most I’ve ever see.”

Nataliey would have entered sixth grade at Empire Elementary School later this summer. Last year, she was student body president, her mother said, and her career goal was to be a doctor. Her fourth-grade year, she was at Empire Elementary only a month because her family had just moved there.

“She was a great student, a real leader, involved in many things,” Empire Elementary Principal Nancy Fox said Tuesday.

Fox had just met with some faculty members to talk about some of the projects Nataliey had wanted to get done at the school. “We want to try to carry on where we can. For example, she wanted a buddy bench where students can go when they feel like they don’t have somebody to play with,” the principal said. “Others can come and join them and include them.”

As typically happens when a student dies during the school year or while on break, a crisis response team is scheduled to meet, Fox said. She anticipates that when the school year starts Aug. 9, counselors and a school psychologist will be made available to anyone in need of assistance. “It’s such a profound loss. ... All the students knew her,” Fox said. There likely will be intense support available the first few days of the school year, then ongoing assistance as needed by children.

Staff, too, is shaken by the loss of Nataliey, Fox said. “It’s the hardest thing an educator can go through. We’re all about the future of children and building that future with them.”

Lessa Garcia said the family would love for Nataliey’s friends to be at her services. Viewing will be Monday from 4 to 8 p.m. at Salas Brothers funeral home, 419 Scenic Drive, Modesto. The funeral service will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at The House Modesto, 1601 Coffee Road.

Through Friday, friends and family will be having daily car washes from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the parking lot next to the Rico’s Pizza at 5000 Yosemite Blvd.

Nataliey was the oldest of five children: Christopher will be 10 in a month, Tieler soon will be 5, Maicie will be 1 next month and half sister Lilly is 5. She loved being with family, Lessa Leatherman said. Murphy said Nataliey always would be picking up baby sister Maicie to give her affection.

Asked how the children are handling Nataliey’s death, Murphy said, “The kids are sad, but for the most part they don’t really realize what’s going on.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Empire child who drowned is remembered for her bright spirit."