Friend Aids San Leandro Woman Who Died Alone At Christmas

A terse entry in the San Leandro Police Department's daily activity log for Dec. 28th described an "unattended death."

Behind those two words lies a tale of friendship and amateur detetective work that has helped authorities locate the surviving kin of Joan Lucas, 72, who police say died of natural causes in her west San Leandro home -- probably just before her birthday on Dec. 25th.

Now the deceased woman's relatives in Mansfield, Ohio, are in contact with local authorities thanks to Nola Joy Carello of Sacramento, a long-time friend of Lucas's thanks to their shared interest in figure-skating.

Carello told Patch how she got involved and what she did to find Lucas's family.

She and Lucas were both figure skating judges, Carello said. Although they lived in different cities, they kept up their friendship by meeting during competitions and also through regular phone calls.

"I made it a habit of calling her every Christmas on her birthday," Carillo told Patch.

When her Christmas call went unanswered and she was unable to reach Lucas in succeeding days, Carello became worried. On Jan. 1, she called the San Leandro Police Department.

"I just had this gut feeling," she said.

The police logged the call as a request to "ascertain (unamed person's) welfare, but did not dispatch an officer because, as Carello learned, they had already discovered Lucas's body after getting a similar call on Dec. 28th.

Who made that Dec. 28 call Carello doesn't know.

Nor is it known exactly when Lucas died.

"The last time she was seen alive was by a neighbor on Dec. 23," said Alameda County Coroner's Office Deputy C. Frazier.

Frazier said by the time her body was discovered on Dec. 28th it had decomposed to the point where it appeared she had been dead for several days.

"It's not like CSI where you can be exact," Frazier said.

But the time of death was not the mystery that galvanized Carello.  What worried her was that authorities did not know where to find Lucas's next of kin.

Frazier told Patch it can difficult to find relatives for people whose families live out of state.

So Carello went into action based upon what she knew about her figure-skating friend. She knew that Lucas was from Mansfield, Ohio, and that her friend had once expressed the desire to be buried in the same funeral plot as her mother.

With that information, Carello contacted the Mansfield News Journal, which published a story Sunday asking Lucas's family to contact authorities in Alameda County.

By Monday, one of Lucas's kin had stepped forward. The individual did not wish to be named, but the deceased woman's family is now in a position to settle her affairs thanks to Carello's efforts.

"It's really extraordinary what she's done," said Jean Fahmie, a board member with the Bay Area's St. Moritz Ice Skating Club, which eulogized Lucas after Carello enlisted her skating friends in the effort to find Lucas's family.

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