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Marc Fontino hugs his sister Jennifer Dean in the kitchen of his townhome where he last spent time with his wife. Daphne Fontino, 43, became the latest of at least 18 people who have died during a series of powerful California storms.
Rachel Bujalski, Freelance / Special to The Chronicle
The kids had left for school, so it was just Daphne and Marc Fontino at the breakfast table Tuesday. Daphne spread jelly and cream cheese on her homemade cinnamon bagels and scrambled some eggs while Marc sang two of her favorite Smokey Robinson songs to her — “Just to See Her” and “One Heartbeat.”
Still beaming from their 15th wedding anniversary celebration 11 days earlier, the couple looked forward to renewing their vows later this month. They planned to shop for a new suit and dress this week. The couple, who both work for a company that shuttles elderly and fragile clients to their medical appointments, jumped into their company cars and left for work.
“I love you,” Marc told his wife.
About 24 hours later, on Wednesday morning, a Sonoma County sheriff’s diver would find Daphne Fontino, 43, dead inside her Prius, submerged in 8 to 10 feet of water after Mark West Creek overflowed its banks in a low basin west of Santa Rosa. A desperate 911 call Tuesday morning, as the swollen creek poured into her car, was not enough to save her. Rescuers could not find her vehicle, which had been swept almost 100 yards off Trenton-Healdsburg Road and into a Forestville vineyard.
Fontino is among at least 18 people who have died in California after a series of storms pounded the state, unleashing flash floods, fallen trees and mudslides.
On Wednesday, just hours after search teams found Fontino’s car and body, her distraught husband Mark, 50, spoke to The Chronicle and shared their love story and his broken heart.
The top of a car is marked with flotation devices in the flooded area of a vineyard along the 6000 block of Trenton-Healdsburg Road in Forestville on Wednesday. Sonoma Sheriff’s Twitter account announced they had recovered the body of a 43-year-old individual from a submerged car in the area.
Benjamin Fanjoy, Freelance / Special to The Chronicle“Her spirit is still alive in me and it always will be,” he said. “She meant so much to me — you just don’t understand.”
Marc was born and raised in San Francisco. Daphne was born in Shanghai, before her parents moved the family to Hong Kong. At 16, she came to the United States in search of an education.
The couple met in a San Francisco Chinese Lutheran Church. Friends introduced the couple before the congregation traveled to Marin County for an oyster BBQ. Marc offered to drive Daphne’s car because she was in the process of finalizing her driver’s license.
Daphne loved the city. She would visit the Asian markets and buy pork buns, Marc recalled.
They married on Dec. 30, 2007.
“She was beautiful, kind, softhearted and understanding,” Marc recalled. “She had a heart of gold.”
The pair had three children together — Kaitlyn, 14, Kyle, 12, and Kennith, 9.
On her Facebook page, Daphne included a quote above her profile: “family is everything to myself my three beautiful children and my beloved husband Marc Fontino.”
The couple cared for Marc’s father in San Francisco, until his kidneys failed him one last time. Five years ago, they moved up to Ukiah to help care for Marc’s mother, who also had kidney problems.
“She always opened her arms to help people with anything,” Marc’s sister Jennifer Dean, 39, said. “She was just a wonderful person.”
That warmth extended to animals too. Daphne, an animal lover, recently fostered two rescue dogs — a German shepherd named Rex and a Lab called Roxanne. She recently found Rex a permanent home, Marc said.
On Dec. 30, she baked Marc an anniversary cake and squeezed out a message in frosting across the top — “I Love My Husband.”
The pair had planned to renew their vows on Jan. 21 at Faith Lutheran Church in Ukiah. Daphne wanted it to be a secret, her husband said, but when she started asking him to go suit shopping with her, Marc figured something was up.
“But that didn’t happen,” he said, interrupting his own story.
Shortly after arriving in Ukiah, Marc began working for North Bay Transit Group, transporting patients up and down Northern California for medical appointments. A few months ago, Daphne joined him at the company. She also worked delivering meals through DoorDash, Marc said.
On Tuesday morning, Daphne had an assignment to drive a woman from Graton to an appointment in Redwood City and back. Marc was dispatched to Fort Bragg for another client. He offered to switch cars with his wife because she preferred his Prius to hers — but his was low on gas, so she declined. He told her he loved her and to be safe.
They both drove off. It was sprinkling in Ukiah that morning. But pouring farther south.
The stretch of Trenton-Healdsburg Road just south of Kistler Vineyards is notorious for flooding. The paved road marks the lowest lying area in the Mark West Creek drainage — part of a larger series of tributaries and creeks that drains west into the Russian River, said Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy Rob Dillion.
“The water comes up pretty quickly there and comes across the road,” Dillion said.
Over the previous seven days, almost 7 inches of rain dumped in Santa Rosa, 10 miles southeast of Forestville.
Shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday, Daphne was driving southbound on Trenton-Healdsburg Road when floodwaters overtook her car. At about 10:08 a.m., she called 911 and reported that water was filling up her car and waves were topping her hood, Dillion said. The call cut off. A dispatcher phoned back several times with no response, Dillion said.
That morning, as Marc drove to Fort Bragg he received a call from a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy. Daphne had been in an accident, he was told, and they couldn’t find her. Verizon, her cell carrier, also couldn’t get a ping to locate her phone, the deputy told him.
He broke down and cried in his car — “I was falling apart.”
He started calling Daphne, but her phone went directly to voicemail. She always answered his calls immediately, he thought.
Fifty miles south, Sonoma County deputies, a marine unit, two helicopters and a firefighter swift water rescue team searched the creek spillover. They found nothing.
A deputy called Marc and asked him to return to his house in case Daphne escaped the waters and returned home without a phone. He rushed back to their townhome. It was empty.
As the sun set, the hunt was suspended due to darkness. Marc couldn’t sleep or eat all night.
The search resumed at sunrise Wednesday. Around 7:46 a.m., a swift water rescue team found a car submerged in the floodwaters, a football field away from the roadway and in a vineyard. A deputy dove into the water, broke a window and found Daphne inside.
Around 11:30 a.m., there was a knock at Marc’s townhome door. She had drowned, the deputy said. Marc collapsed to the ground. The deputy helped him back inside and stayed to make sure he was OK.
“At least I got to tell her I love her before she died,” Marc said later that night, his voice breaking in a conversation with a Chronicle reporter. “We had such a bond between me and her. It was unbreakable.”
Marc Fontino looks at photos of his wife Daphne on his phone in his townhome in Ukiah. Daphne Fontino, 43, became the latest of at least 18 people who have died during a series of powerful California storms.
Rachel Bujalski, Freelance / Special to The ChronicleHis sister helped set up a GoFundMe account , hoping friends and family could help defray Daphne’s funeral costs.
“If anyone would like to, I am a proud man, but I think in this situation I need to ask for help,” he wrote in the fundraising account message. “I also would like to give my deepest condolences to all of the other people and mostly the children that have been hurt during this flood. Please please be careful driving and hold your loved ones tight tonight.”
Lost in his thoughts, Marc recalled his final moments with Daphne before they both left for work Tuesday morning. The lush breakfast. Serenading his wife with her favorite songs.
He started reciting the lyrics to “Just to See Her” over the phone.
“Just to see her … Just to touch her … Just to hold her in my arms again one more time …”
Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com
