The San Luis Obispo Police Department says they have found the body of missing Cal Poly landscape architecture junior Charles Tamae. SLOPD has issued a press release about Tamae’s death.
“The body of Charles Tamae was later discovered on the North East side of the mountain,” the release said. “ It appears at this time that Charles Tamae took his own life. There is no evidence of foul play and the investigation is continuing.”
His body was found on Cerro San Luis Mountain, also referred to as Madonna Mountain, by four students.
“There is no indication of foul play,” said University Police Department Commander Lori Hashim. According to Hashim, four students found Tamae on Cerro San Luis Mountain just before search and rescue teams found his body. These four students had gone to search on their own as other students gathered at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to organize with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department’s Search and Rescue team to begin searching Cerro San Luis (Madonna Mountain).
Tamae had been missing since Monday afternoon where he was last seen on campus by friends. Tamae’s bike was found near the base of the mountain Friday morning and lead to the search being organized.
A command center for the search was set up at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The county search and rescue team was contacted at 9:30 a.m. and were in the field by 10:30 a.m. John Bullaro, planning officer of the San Luis Obispo County search and rescue team, said he was found around 1 p.m. There were k-9 and ATV units as well as five ground teams. There was a request for mutual aid from Santa Barbara, but the request was cancelled when his body was found.
Landscape architecture junior Amanda Bender knew Tamae from class.
“He was the greatest guy,” Bender said. “He was one of those guys everybody likes.”
The day he went missing, Bender said Tamae seemed stressed about a class project, but no more than anyone else in the class.
“We are deeply saddened. The university community has suffered a great loss,” Vice President of student affairs Cornell Morton said. “We have counselors on call 24/7. We don’t shut the doors of the counseling center.”
In an email to the Cal Poly student body, President Warren Baker said that the Office of Student Life and Leadership is planning a memorial service for Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Chumash Auditorium.
Baker also urged students to use counseling resources available through the Cal Poly Health Center as necessary.
Mary Peracca of Counseling Services said there are no special counseling sessions scheduled at this time, but students are invited to come in during a crisis hour from 3 to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“Typically with grief like this the students generally aren’t interested at this time to meet with a therapist, although they’re certainly welcome to,” Peracca said.
Peracca said that with a sudden loss like this, shock and denial is most people’s first response, but whatever people are feeling is normal. My experience so far is that the students are supporting each other and talking amongst themselves, she added.
Peracca said that at the end of every quarter students are under more stress and depending on their circumstances, their resources may be taxed. Some students drink more or smoke more or hurt themselves as a way of coping, she said. Suicide, though not frequent on the Cal Poly campus, is not unheard of.
Megan Hassler, Kate McIntyre, Emilie Egger and Tim Miller contributed to this report.
What a tragedy. My heart goes out to his family and friends.
i love you charles
he was not the type of guy who was depressed i cannot believe it when it is said he took his own life. i just can’t…
This is so surreal…
I always saw you around school in ths
I always wanted to know you
you seemed so cool
and I was too shy
I’m sorry you wanted to go..
why did you?
August 18, 2006
been in my heart since then and will remain there for forever.
love and miss you, Charles.
still praying for your family and friends, you had a good heart, I feel blessed to have been your friend.
I can’t see Charles being so stressed out that he would take his own life. His personality shows no indication that suicide is an option. I need to know some details before I accept suicide. I always kidded him regarding life and career but I knew he was smart and I knew he would be successful. It may not have been in physics but I knew it would be in whatever career he chose.
Why did you remove the part about him hanging from a tree? Was that found to be inaccurate? Is there new info? If so, there should be a correction appended at the top of this article for those who read it before you made the change. Those are the ethics of the web.
you are dumb. have some respect.
Lauren’s right.
she may be right technically but she obviously lacks respect. this is his family and friend’s business. everyone needs to stop being so nosey
everyone should stop being so noosey
To the commentor who responded with: “everyone should stop being so noosey”.
I hope you eat your words. There are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and you appear to have gone out of your way to cross them for no other purpose than to stir controversy. I’m relieved that nobody else took your bait, but I thought I’d say something anyway.
Puns of questionable repute and off-colour comments have their place, and I for one even advocate them; people in general do need to lighten up. But to make a comment like this in a public forum for all of the deceased’s friends and family to read, and within not even a week of his passing, is so far out of bounds you ought to be punished.
I hope someday you come to your senses, and while I would never wish a tragedy of this particular magnitude on anybody, I think you need to wake up at whatever cost and realise that your “rebellious”, “shocking”, whoring attempts at pushing the envelope of decency cause far more hurt than they’re worth.
And furthermore, you leave a profoundly distasteful, upsetting comment, yet you don’t have the cajones to put your name on it? At least show some accountability, for Christ’s sake! If you’re going to stir up trouble, you should be willing to show yourself rather than leave it anonymous and get away with it scot-free.
I don’t leave my name because I’m not a student at Cal Poly and don’t even live in the US, so it’d be moot. But the sentiment is the same wherever, and I’m sure a lot of people who read this will agree with me.
I’ve never seen such an insensitive reply to a death for a public forum. Regardless of desire for professional accuracy, it’s actually rather embarrassing to read this from an aspiring Cal Poly journalist. I hope that in the future, more consideration is made for where professional disputes belong.
I don’t know why people are so upset at you, Lauren. It’s not disrespectful to want to know the truth – I’d say it’s actually much more respectful. And the Mustang Daily are the ones that included it in the first place – why would it be terribly wrong to know why (or just want to know why) it got removed? (And don’t come at me with I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone, I’ve lost 2 very close friends in the last two years, one due to suicide, and my grandma just died, so I know death quite well.)
As a society, why are we so afraid to talk about the details of death, anyways? Out of respect? Even if it is a suicide, it would be better for people to hear about why it happened, and learn from it, and of course, to mourn his death, but still celebrate his life – knowing the circumstances of this person’s death should not stop people from respecting his friends or his families while they are mourning this tragedy.
This Lauren person is an idiot, let the police do their investigation before you start spouting off like some insensitive, naive person. He died, ok, isn’t that enough for you right now, let his friends and family mourn before we have to go over the grisly details. There is plenty of time, in the coming months, years, to get the details you are so uglyly salivating for.
This is a good example of a someone who’s still in the process of learning wanting to showcase what they know – or in this case, what they think they know.
i dont believe this….he wasnt the type.
r.i.p charles we all loved u…were gonna miss u….
i kno ur ina better place
much love
charles i hope whatever pain that you were feeling has been lifted off your chest. miss you so much, we all do
The “ethics of the web” ???
Who the hell are you to say what the “ethics of the web” are?
It is standard journalism practice to omit details of suicide. The Mustang practices journalism.
How do you know about the tree? Did the police say that? Was it rumor? Did you verify it?
Those are the ethics of journalism, miss.
John did you read her post before replying? I’m interested to know as well why that information was retracted without explanation
Errrr, yeah, looks like he did?
it is common professional practice to leave suicide details from public news reports, that’s how it goes, it should never have been there in the first place. the information was obviously omitted out of RESPECT for the deceased as well as his family and friends, which lauren is clearly lacking. they removed it for a purpose, but thanks for throwing it back up there anyways… you can move on to the NEXT STORY now.
The details as to the cause of death that were originally in the story are still considered to be accurate by authorities. However, they were inadvertently posted and have since been removed out of respect for the deceased and his family.
Lauren’s correct that the ethics of journalism require a higher commitment to transparency than a quick hit of the delete button, and I’m sorry that our own misstep made that necessary.
—MD editors
You still should have added an editor\’s note on the article itself. Ie: \"We have removed the details of the suicide out of respect for the family.\" This is particularly important for stories published online, where there is no paper record.
Details of the death, or related discussions thereof have no place on this site or in any report. For God’s sake STOP. We’ve lost a friend and his family has lost a son. The shock and pain of this are unbearable and those of you who can’t or won’t understand that are either assholes or morons.
Seems to me if you really wanted to be “respectful,” you would remove Lauren’s original post, or at least the offending part of it. Obviously you’re not giving the family the respect they deserve if you’re still blatantly leaving it out in the open for everyone to read.
Oh wow… I knew about this story, but not about this. I agree with the person who argued that details of a suicide are usually not reported in a news article unless the person is a public figure. While Lauren’s argument would have merit if, say, this were a homicide investigation, suicide is still consider a private matter (especially the death of a student).
C- I agree. It’s like if you are curious because knowing more details actually HELPS some of us grieving try to make more sense of it. I’d rather know the details than go crazy not knowing how. That’s me personally, but god forbid we have some curiousity right? it must mean we’re disrespectful because we need those extra details for more closure.
Sam- Calm down and get a grip. There is no reason to call others idiots just because you are grieving. MANY of us are grieving. No one is "uglyly" salivating for anything, we’re not animals. People have different ways of accepting such a sad event. You are the one that came off sounding a lot more naive and insensitive.
I said Lauren is an idiot, and I still believe she is, is she going to run around the memorial service asking people about the details of the suicide, probably she is so stupid.
I said Lauren is an idiot salivating for grisly details, not everyone, so don’t try to tell me how to feel or what to do, I have the right to voice my opinion at least some of us have respect for the dead, obviously not you and Lauren.
What a disgrace she is to SLO and you can join her, if you choose to continue your stupid rant against those who would like you both to shut up for awhile while we mourn the loss of a dear friend and son.
Lauren is right that unexplained deletions from a web article aren’t the proper journalistic practice. Others are right that it could probably have gone without mentioning, and Lauren might have inferred that the removal was done out of consideration for his friends and family and not because the facts changed. I think everyone’s being a bit hard on her though. Maybe we could stop posting about this, and remember our fellow student Charles, the value of life, and the importance of our friends.
Yes, please shut up Lauren, can you do that until his poor soul is buried?
she’s disgusting, you should read this horrible thing she posted on the memorial facebook page
Thank you, Lauren, I was curious about the facts of his death. It doesn’t seem like he would kill himself. …Facts are facts. and I don’t think being honest about them is disrespectful.
Lauren wasn’t interested in being honest, she just wanted attention. She shows no journalistic decency, if that’s possible, she doesn’t have the maturity to realize that what she does hurts people. Very unprofessional and I hope she learns her lesson.
We don’t need to have the grisly details to understand that a student who was loved dearly by his family and friends is gone forever.
Doesn’t this school teach humanity? Obviously it doesn’t when it produces people like Lauren who pretend they are journalists and hide behind the cloak of wanting to get to the truth.
There is plenty of time in the future to get the grisly facts, now is not the time.
sam, please dont place all cal poly students under lauren’s same category, that is not fair to us students who knew and loved charles and show some decency about his passing.
The SCHOOL does not "produce people" such as Lauren. It’s utterly ridiculous to blame her comments on Cal Poly and lump all of us under the same category. I have to admit, I was curious HOW they knew it was a suicide, but I wasn’t going to go around asking anyone because quite frankly it’s none of my business.
I just assumed he fell off and it was freak accident, because it’s happened before in that area a few times.
When I read her comment, I remember actually gasping out loud because it was so unexpected.
What matters is his family and friends lost someone dear to them.
I feel really really awful for his friends who found him, for his family, and for him.
I feel the paper acted appropriately in editing out details. honestly I don’t care if they put a note or not. Sometimes things shouldn’t be published out of respect, and I think it shows a lot that the staff recognized that. Even the local papers have left details out.
He Died on my birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget him.
He Died on my birthday. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget him.
My deepest respect goes ou to Charles’ family and friends. I knew Charles since Middle School and I can’t believe this happened. I’m sorry for such a late response but I only found out tonight. Much love goes out to him and everyone back at home from Torrance will remember him to be a kind, likeable, and good-hearted person. Take care Charles!