A man drowned while kayaking in a state park after helping to save his fiancé whom he had proposed to there just a couple days earlier.
Travis Valenti, 37, is presumed dead after his kayak filled with water and overturned on Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park on Friday, according to a GoFundMe page set up with initial hopes to find him.
‘Unfortunately, park rangers searched but don’t have a dive team to search further,’ states the GoFundMe, adding that ‘the family is obviously distraught’.
Travis proposed to his girlfriend Marlene last Wednesday while vacationing in Washington state. They went kayaking at the park two days after he popped the question.
‘It started out as the best trip of their lives and took just a tragic turn that nobody could really see coming,’ Travis’ brother Austin Valenti told News12 Long Island.
His brother managed to push Marlene to help her get to safety before he got into trouble himself.
‘Travis (got) her the extra little push that she needed to get safe,’ Austin said. ‘And they still haven’t found him since Friday at 2 or 3pm.’
His kayak began taking in water and he tried to continue paddling but had to abandon it and tread water, Fox 13 Seattle reported.
Travis’ fiancé tried to rescue him but her kayak also flipped. She made it to shore.
Neither of them were wearing life jackets, according to Olympic National Park Services officials.
Travis was from Massapequa, a hamlet in Long Island, New York.
‘He can light up a room and make anybody laugh,’ Austin said.
‘He was just everybody’s favorite guy, including Marlene’s and all of ours, they were just a beautiful couple, and they had this beautiful life planned out and it just gets cut so short out of nowhere.’
The GoFundMe had raised more than $28,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
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