Crime & Safety

Trainer Recalls Spreckels Victim's Fitness, Friendliness

Rebecca Zahau described as good natured and in great shape, despite an old leg injury.

Shopkeepers who encountered Rebecca Zahau during her brief time in Coronado remembered the dead woman Saturday as someone who was friendly and extremely fit.

One also mentioned a permanent limp the woman attributed to an accident that she didn't explain.

Zahau, 32, was found dead Wednesday, at one of the community's most-storied properties, the oceanfront Spreckels mansion.

Investigators have not revealed a cause of death and have openly wondered if she might have taken her own life. She was hanging from what detectives described as a three-foot railing on the balcony. Her hands were tied behind her; there also were bindings on her legs, but they weren't tied together.

Zahau's boyfriend, Arizona entrepreneur Jonah Shacknai, owns the property.

Joe Ochoa, who owns Hollywood Fitness, said Shacknai has been a long-time member, while Zahau joined last July. He recalled that she came in at least four days a week, preferred cardio workouts and favored the gym's stair-stepper.

“You couldn't pass without her saying hi to you,” Ochoa said.

One of his trainers, Reed Holman, recalled Zahau's evident limp, he thought on her left side.

She had “an awkward walk,” he said, describing it as the gait of someone who could not put her full weight down on a foot because of a blister or sore.

Nevertheless, she was so physically fit Holman didn't ever stop to offer her workout advice.

“I don't know what I could have done for her,” he said.

Holman remembers Shacknai as “very laid back.” He described the couple as mostly summer members, referring to Coronado's popularity for those wanting to beat the desert heat.

He said he rarely had long conversations with Zahau, but did so last Saturday, when the woman excitedly discussed a party she was planning for Tuesday, which turned out to be the day before she died.

“She was really stoked about it,” he said.

But two days after Zahau's talk with Holman, Shacknai's 6-year-old son fell down a staircase in the mansion and suffered severe injuries. said she was deeply shaken by the incident.

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Detectives briefly returned to the Spreckels mansion Friday, but little else was happening on the property Saturday morning.

Daisies in mixed bouquets sat on the lawn as part of a makeshift memorial. Two vans, one with California plates and another with Arizona plates, were parked in the driveway. 


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