‘Can’t go through this again’: Missing SC diver’s family prays he’s found soon
This breaking story has been updated with new developments. Read the most recent story here.
Kim Devier has been through this before.
Her husband, Alan Devier, the diver who went missing in Port Royal Sound on Tuesday, was lost to her briefly last month and has now been lost again.
She waited by her phone Thursday night, waiting for it to ring, hoping the person on the other end would say he’s been found.
She can’t believe she finds herself in this position - twice now in less than two months.
Last month, Alan and his diving partner Jimmy Armstrong - “Mr. Jimmy” as Kim fondly calls him - took a boat out on the Sound.
The Beaufort area is Alan’s favorite place to dive and he makes the trek down from his Charleston home often. But the pair’s typical dive on March 12 turned into a rescue mission when Alan, 49, and Jimmy, 66, didn’t return home.
They’re both experienced divers and had hunted for fossils and shark teeth together a number of times before.
But diving is dangerous by its nature.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the next morning that the men were found. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter found Jimmy first, and a charter fishing boat later found Alan.
They were safe, but they knew something had to change.
“After that, they came up with a safety plan,” Kim said.
She said the men agreed to have one stay on the boat while the other was in the water.
The diver would stay on the safety line so he couldn’t be carried away by the current.
Both men would wear GPS monitors.
His sons told Alan he couldn’t go back into the water until they bought him the GPS.
“For us, it was such a bad experience,” Kim said of the initial incident. “I told him, ‘We can’t go through this again.’”
Early Tuesday, with the plan in place and weeks removed from last month’s rescue, Alan again planned to head down to the Sound with Jimmy.
But he overslept that morning.
He was rushed to get on the road in time and left his new GPS monitor behind.
The men did their day’s worth of diving before Alan said to Jimmy: “I’m going to do one more dive.”
Jimmy gave his GPS to Alan, Kim said, but in the midst of grabbing other items before plunging in to the water, he again forgot it.
After a while, Jimmy got worried. The same panic he felt the last time begin creeping up his spine.
Alan had been gone longer than usual.
Jimmy dove in, searched for Alan for a couple of hours. When he didn’t find him, he called 911.
Local law enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other agencies have been looking for Alan since.
On Thursday, a Coast Guard spokesperson said it was “still a search and rescue effort.”
The agencies have searched more than 785 square miles since Alan vanished.
Now, Kim is waiting in Beaufort for her husband to come home.
Their daughter Kayla, 17, is there too.
So were his sons Dakotah, 26, and Kaleb, 30, and their wives.
So are Alan’s parents.
Local officials in charge of the search meet with the family at least twice a day.
Alan’s always been a “water baby,” she said. He grew up on a lake, fishing, skiing, on a boat more often than not.
It wasn’t until his eldest son Kaleb took a diving class in college at Troy University that Alan got interested in diving.
When Kaleb was taking classes at Troy, Alan spent took classes closer to home so the two could go diving together when Kaleb visited Charleston.
“Alan was absolutely intrigued by it,” Kim said. “He loved it and it grew into his passion.”
The couple, who are from south Alabama and were married in 2002, moved to Charleston in 2006 for Alan’s job with Boeing.
They never expected Alan to become an occupational diver, but once he started he realized it was what he really loved to do.
And once he found his first Megalodon shark tooth during a dive in the Cooper River, there was no going back.
He was hooked and now does it full-time.
“There’s nowhere he’d rather be than Beaufort,” Kim said. “He’s said the teeth down there are just pristine. It’s his favorite place to dive.”
Now, Kim and her family can only wait.
“We’re here,” Kim said. “We’re praying. We’re waiting until we get the call that he’s been found.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 7:18 PM.
