By CODY MANN/Mid-Valley Media Group
Caroline Moses was living her dream, doing everything she had ever wanted to do.
The wife and mother from Corvallis taught kindergarten and middle school art classes, but what was most important to her was being a wife and mother.
“She had so much love to give,” said her husband, Michael Moses. “She was always looking for someone else to give that love to — whether that was a chicken or a rabbit or a kindergartner or a middle schooler or aspiring artist.”
That dream came crashing down for the family when Caroline Moses was swept to sea by a sneaker wave near the mouth of Siletz Bay in Lincoln City on a Sunday in October and drowned.
Despite a rapid and extensive response and search effort, Caroline Moses’ body was found two hours later on the beach four miles away from where the sneaker wave swept her out to sea.
Every October, the extended Moses family — children, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins — camp out, usually at Beverly Beach State Park, Michael Moses said. Sunday, Oct. 19 was the last of a three-day trip.
After grabbing a bite at Mo’s Seafood & Chowder in Taft, they went to a spot they know well to pick up agates along the shore and walk their dogs. This year’s trip included Caroline, Michael, their two boys, ages 11 and 13, her mom and his sister with her family.
“We were out on the beach picking agates, and the best place to pick them is right at the mouth of the river there,” he said. “The waves go out and expose a bunch.”
They had been on the beach for about 45 minutes, Michael holding their new puppy while Caroline went searching for agates.
He knew the dangers the area. He said to himself, “You’ve got to watch her, keep your eyes on her because she gets distracted easily. Just protect her.”
Michael was vigilant. Meanwhile, other than getting splashed a few times, with Caroline getting her feet wet but laughing it off, it was a wonderful time — a fantastic, perfect weekend, he said.
Eventually, everyone was ready to head back to the car for the trip home.
“That was the only moment I took my eyes off of her,” Michael said. “And I swear to God, it couldn’t have been more than 5 to 7 seconds.”
Tragedy in seconds
Michael Moses has an oceanography degree and is a planner in the coastal division of the state’s Land Conservation and Development Commission.
“What I do specifically is I help coastal jurisdictions plan for natural hazards, plan for community resilience, plan for exactly the kind of thing that happened to Caroline,” he said.
Here’s what happened.
Family members were spread maybe 10 to 15 feet apart, and Caroline Moses just happened to be the last one in the group. When they turned around to look back, nobody saw her.
“We didn’t see it happen. My oldest son, he kind of caught it a little bit, but nobody else really saw it happen,” Michael Moses said. “I think it must have just been coming in right as we were turning around for it to be that fast.”
Michael heard shouting, but it didn’t register at first. A second later he heard it again and turned to see his wife in the middle of the channel being dragged out to the open ocean.
“Me doing what I do, I knew exactly the danger,” he said. “I knew exactly what was happening.”
A choice
Michael ran into the water and started swimming. But when the current started pulling him, he realized any farther and it was going to take him out too.
He knew what that meant.
“I thought in my head, ‘The boys can’t lose both of us’, so I had to make a choice,” he said. “All the rescue crews said I made the right choice, and I think I did, but it was the hardest choice ever to make.”
Michael said the current probably would have taken him too if not for his heavy rain boots that filled with water.
Caroline’s mother was hysterical and running into the water. Michael and a woman he didn’t know grabbed her, but a wave knocked them all down, sending the stranger tumbling through the water. With a struggle, they finally managed to get Caroline’s mother to higher ground.
“After that, we literally had to sit on the beach and watch Caroline float out,” Michael said. “She went out the breakers, almost a half a mile. At that point, I started to get a little hysterical because doing what I do, knowing what I know, I knew what was going to happen.
“I know she swam her hardest. I’m sure she did everything she could. She knows what to do. But once you hit those breakers, they’re just going to bowl you over and hold you down.”
North Lincoln Fire & Rescue crews were on the scene within a few minutes of being dispatched, launching two rescue jet skis to search for Caroline, followed by a Lincoln City police drone. In short order, the U.S. Coast Guard brought in two lifeboats and a helicopter.
“Then we just had to sit there for two hours, soaking wet, freezing, waiting,” Michael said. “And that was torture.”
Artistic and creative
Michael describes Caroline as bright, bubbly, positive, outgoing and very artistic and creative, a fantastic painter and drawer, and interested in all sorts of crafting. As an art student, she focused on mosaics, painting, sculpting and woodworking.
“There were a few things that she always wanted to do in her life,” Michael said. “One was be a nurse. Before I met her, she was a CNA (a certified nursing assistant), and she had done that for a few years. She always wanted to be an artist, and she always wanted to be a teacher.”
When the opportunity to achieve her goals came up, Caroline went for it. She taught kindergarten at Zion Lutheran Christian School, a K-8 in Corvallis, and had recently begun teaching a middle school art class there too.
She had just started her second year and planned to stay at least until her first class finished eighth grade.
“Everybody was thrilled to have her, and she was thrilled to be there,” Michael said. “It was the best job she ever had; she was so happy.”
Caroline’s artistic side was an asset at the school as well, incorporating creative art projects into reading lessons, making portfolios for kids, even having them do self-portraits to see how they see themselves. She repeats the assignment at the end of the year so they can see their growth.
“She really brought something special to our team,” said Zion Principal Charlotte Bohlmann. “Being a Christian school, we do recognize that we were certainly blessed with her presence and with who she was. … She was just one of those ‘cool girls.’
Caroline participated in numerous Corvallis art shows and other artistic endeavors. But her mural outside Monroe Avenue Salon and Spa in Corvallis that stands out for most. It’s a mosaic depicting a Fender’s blue butterfly — a once endangered and now threatened subspecies endemic to the Willamette Valley.
“Her mural is kind of her crowning achievement art-wise in the community,” Michael Moses said. “Each of these tiles is individually hand-painted … Each square is an inch and a half, painted right on the brick. That’s about the size of the butterfly. And there are 6,000 squares. So, this represents the entire population of Fender’s blue at one point in time.”
One day this month Michael Moses and Zion students walked to the mural where Michael told them the story of how it came to be.
“She did a lot of mosaics. She called it painterly sculpture,” Michael said. “She would build with wood a panel or a piece of furniture or whatever, and then she would mosaic all over that piece, and then paint it with watercolor. The mosaic would be individual tiles that she veneered one by one, like thousands of them; my whole house is full of these works.”
Saying goodbye
Michael Moses said since Caroline’s death, the response from family, friends and colleagues has been tremendous and overwhelming. On top of a meal train that stretches into December, people have sent countless cards, flowers, gifts and other generous gestures.
“She touched a lot of lives,” he said. “She was well loved, well known. We really ran in a lot of different circles.”
Michael said the widespread response to Caroline’s death — the care he and the boys are seeing from family, friends and people they know from all walks of life — is a testament to the community she built around her family.
“I’m still finding myself having to go and tell people that you wouldn’t think to tell in a normal circumstance,” he said. “All these people just know her and love her and care about her.”
- An open service for Caroline Moses with reception afterward is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 29 at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Hillsboro.
- Cody Mann is a reporter for Mid-Valley Media Group, publishers of the Corvallis Gazette-Times and Albany Democrat-Herald, where this story first appeared Nov. 12, 2025.
