Without A Trace Fiance Organizes Own Search For Missing Lauderdale Pilot.
November 5, 1991|By ARDY FRIEDBERG, Staff Writer
Donna Griffin and Paul Lukaris planned to get married by a justice of the peace this weekend.

But just before noon on Thursday, the Korean War-era jet carrying Lukaris and pilot John Verdi from an air show in Houston disappeared on the way back to Fort Lauderdale.

A four-day search by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Civil Air Patrol of 5,000 square miles of marshlands and the Gulf off southwest Louisiana turned up nothing and was called off on Sunday night.

That`s not good enough for Griffin.

``We`ve been together for eight years,`` said Griffin, 32, who works for an insurance company in Fort Lauderdale. ``We were going to the Keys and just get married. I`m going to stay at this until I find something.``

Griffin chartered a Lear jet in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday and flew to Patterson, La., 60 miles west of Lafayette, to start her own search.

``A man on an oil rig thinks he saw the plane go down about noon on Thursday,`` Griffin said. ``From what we`re being told, they are almost 100 percent sure the plane went down over land. The marshland is huge. As far as I`m concerned, the search wasn`t long enough.

``The man on the rig told the Civil Air Patrol he saw an unusual, old military type plane flying very low heading east.``

Griffin and pilots David Smith and Ron Sother planned to visit the oil rig, 30 to 40 miles west of Patterson on Monday afternoon.

The missing plane, a Grumman TF-9J Cougar, is a restored two-passenger Korean war fighter jet built between 1951 and 1959. It is owned by World Jet, operating out of Executive Airport, Griffin said.

She said the company flew the plane to Houston and that Verdi, 64, a professional pilot living in Alabama, was bringing it back. Lukaris, 41, also is a professional pilot.

World Jet did not return two telephone calls.

``They had workable ejection seats, but no life preservers since their flight plan was over land,`` Griffin said.

David Schulman, a friend of the couple, said, ``We don`t know where they are. If it was your friend or spouse, what would you do? We`re looking for people with private planes who can get out and help the search.``

Lukaris was chief pilot trainer for American Flyers at Executive Airport for four years, leaving about four months ago to spend time with his ailing mother, Griffin said. He has been a private pilot for 19 years and is qualified on a number of aircraft including commercial jets.

Lukaris was born in Lake George, N.Y. and moved from Boston with Griffin 5 1/ 2 years ago, she said. His mother died July 4. His father lives in Coconut Creek.

Lt. Col. Michael Kerr of the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinoissaid the men are classified as missing.

The Air Force Center, which coordinates aircraft searches all over the country, said the search was suspended because no evidence of a crash was found.

``There was no debris, no plane, no people, no indication of what happened except that it just disappeared off the radar,`` said Lt. Scott Memmott from the Coast Guard office in New Orleans.

Said Griffin: ``I`m staying until I come back with something. I can`t believe in 1991 that a plane this size with two people can just disappear off the earth. I can`t accept that.``