A heartbroken husband is asking for the Big Island’s help locating his 41-year-old wife after the Seattle woman went missing late Tuesday from the shoreline when he went back to their Kohala Coast hotel room to fetch her inhaler.
Sonam Saxena said Wednesday he last saw Smriti Saxena around 10 p.m. Tuesday when he left her on a secluded beach area south of Anaehoomalu Bay to retrieve her asthma inhaler from their Waikoloa Beach Marriot Resort room. They had reached following can approximately 20-minute walk after enjoying libations at Lava Lava Beach Club.
“She got an asthma attack right there on the beach and she was feeling weak and she didn’t want to walk all the way back because it’s almost a 20-minute walk back from that beach to our room,” said Sonam Saxena, a product manager for Google Cloud in Seattle. “So, I said, ‘hey, you know what? You stay here, you have your phone with you and I’ll just go to the room grab your inhaler and pump and come back.’
“I did that. Went to the room, picked up the inhaler, came back, and she was missing,” Sonam Saxena said of Smriti Saxena, who is a business program manager for Microsoft.
He estimated he was gone for no more than 40 to 50 minutes as he tried to rush knowing that Smriti Saxena was uncomfortable and in need of her inhaler. At the secluded beach, her purse, phone, credit card and driver’s license were all there, but no sign of the woman whom he said he’s been in love with since 2001.
“She was missing from there, from that spot,” he said.
Sonam Saxena said he headed back to the hotel room, in the dark of night, hoping that she’d tried to make her way there.
“I was disturbed because why would she leave her purse and her phone on the beach and head back to the room. It just seemed really odd,” he said. “So I rushed back to the room. I checked the room and I saw that she wasn’t in the room. So I went down stairs and that’s when I dialed 911.”
Prior to the arrival of police, Sonam Saxena said he and security searched the beach.
“We called out for her but there was nothing,” he said. “No response.”
The pair, married for 17 years with two children, ages 13 and 8, come to Hawaii every year to celebrate their eldest child’s birthday. Sonam Saxena said his children are with him as he searches for his wife.
“Any word that we can get out there so that more people about this it will be very helpful,” he said.
Smriti Saxena is described as being 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing 102 pounds with a fair complexion and being of Indian descent. She was last seen wearing a black dress with a multi-colored floral design and black jacket, according to police.
Anyone with information on Saxena’s whereabouts is asked to call the department’s nonemergency line at 935-3311.
Earlier Wednesday, police confirmed finding a body in the area where the woman was last seen. However, police have not provided any information regarding gender or identity or if it is related to the disappearance of Smriti Saxena.
