Accurate Aviation General Manager and Vietnam War veteran Bob Trimble, 71, was returning from the Palm Spring Air Museum where he had donated a fellow soldier’s Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POI/MIA) bracelet when his small plane crashed in the San Bernardino Mountains Saturday killing himself and 50-year-old Terri Day , an Accurate Aviation employee, The Desert Sun reported.
The two had flown in Trimble’s Piper PA-28R-180 plane to Palm Springs that day so that Trimble could donate a POI/MIA that belonged to U.S. Army Specialist 4 David Lee Scott, with whom he had served in the Vietnam War, according to The Desert Sun and a prepared statement from Accurate Aviation. Trimble wore the bracelet for many years after Scott was declared Missing In Action after an attack on Vietnam’s North Central Coast. On Saturday, Trimble had donated the keepsake to the Palm Springs Air Museum’s POI/MIA bracelet project, as stated in The Desert Sun.
Remembered as “an avid pilot and aircraft lover,” Trimble also served as a faculty member at SBCC’s Department of Alcohol and Drug Counseling, where he worked with community members in recovery. At the time of his death, Trimble had also served his community for 14 years as Executive Director of Thresholds to Recovery and for 10 years as supervisor of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Treatment Program.