Hunt for plane cut as family has vigil
A Tampa man, his mother and his stepfather were on a plane that vanished earlier this week.
By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published June 23, 2005
A Tampa man is one of three family members missing since their twin-engine Piper airplane disappeared 25 miles east of Port St. Lucie earlier this week, the Coast Guard said.
With no remains found and no debris spotted, the Coast Guard on Tuesday suspended the search for Scott Sheline of Tampa and his mother and stepfather, Paulette and Joseph Helseth of Vero Beach.
Their plane disappeared from an air traffic control center's radar in Miami at about 11:10 a.m. Monday. The family was returning to Fort Pierce after a weekend trip to Treasure Cay, Bahamas.
"Our family knows 100 percent that anything that (Joseph Helseth) could possibly do or have done in the plane to bring it down somewhere, he would have been able to do it," his sister, Laurie Ashley, said Wednesday.
She drove from Tallahassee to Vero Beach to keep vigil with other family members and help organize volunteer search efforts now that the Coast Guard search has officially ended.
"Anybody who was over to the Bahamas or coming back from the Bahamas, please look for any debris or any signs of anything," she said.
Joseph Helseth, 60, has been flying airplanes since he was 18, his sister said. The Piper had recently passed its annual inspection, and Ashely said her brother was a "very, very seasoned and very, very careful" pilot.
Sheline, 30, has lived on Davis Islands and in other parts of Tampa and works for a credit card center based in Tampa, said his brother, Matt Sheline, who came to Florida from Cape Cod, Mass., after hearing of the plane's disappearance.
Paulette Helseth, 58, and Joseph Helseth have been married 22 years. They worked together at Helseth Machine and Marine Services, a repair business that Helseth's father started 56 years ago.
Ashley said the couple has a yacht docked in Treasure Cay that they usually visit every weekend.
Less than 30 minutes after the twin-engine Piper vanished from radar on Florida's southeast coast, a single-engine Cessna went missing on the southwest coast.
The Coast Guard searched for that plane about 30 miles northwest of Cape Sable. The only person aboard the plane, flying from Naples to Key West, was pilot James Sayer. Rescuers found a debris field nearby, but Sayer remains missing. The search for him was also suspended Tuesday.
The Coast Guard wants boaters who find anything related to either crash to call by phone or marine radio Channel 16.
- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this story.