GRAYS HARBOR — Teri A. Dascher struggled with drug addiction and lived with HIV, but she also is remembered as a talented athlete and a friendly soul.

Dascher, 47, was found dead Oct. 23 on Cranberry Beach in Grays Harbor County, the victim of an apparent boat wreck. Dascher’s town of residence is listed as Kingston.

Accidental drowning was listed as the cause of death, according to the Grays Harbor Coroner.

Her boating companion, John Phillips Stapp of King County, has not yet been found, said Rick Scott, Grays Harbor County undersheriff.

Dascher’s mother, Sharon Dascher of St. George, Utah, said she had spoken with her daughter before she left for the trip, and said she was eager to see the world.

“She was quite excited,” Sharon Dascher said.

Another family member said she lived in Kingston for about a year, but she is originally from Shoreline. Her brother lives in Kingston.

Sharon Dascher said Teri Dascher had an ability to connect with people.

“I don’t think a person out there met her and didn’t like her,” Sharon Dascher said.

Despite an addiction to heroin and cocaine, and an infection that nearly cost her the use of her legs, Teri Dascher made progress against her addiction as a patient at Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Bailey-Boushay House, which helps addicts living with HIV/AIDS turn their lives around.

“I don’t think I’ll ever use again,” Teri Dascher said in a biography posted on the home’s Web site. “The devil had me. But when I came in here, he went away. I was in heaven.”

“She did struggle with drugs,” Sharon Dascher said, but believed her daughter was sober for the last part of her life.

“It’s just heartbreaking what a family has to go through when a person is that way,” Sharon Dascher said of her daughter’s addiction.

In Teri Dascher’s younger days, she was passionate about sports and fishing.

“Anytime there was an opening spot on a softball team, she was there,” Sharon Dascher said.

“I miss her terribly,” she said.

Dascher reportedly left Kingston in September. She and Stapp were planning to sail his 25-foot Coronado sailboat to the islands in the South Pacific, Scott said.

The last few weeks they were in the marina in Westport having work done on the sailboat, Scott said.

The pair left the marina Oct. 18 and presumably headed south, Scott said.

Dascher’s last known communication was a cell phone call to a friend in which she confirmed the pair were under way and were in “heavy seas,” Scott said. Dascher told her friend she was inside the boat trying to keep things in place, while Stapp was topside steering the boat.

Scott said the sheriff’s office is filing a court order to obtain cell phone records to pin down when the call was made and determine from where the call was made.

A beachcomber discovered Dascher’s body — and what appeared to be the boat’s rudder and miscellaneous items from the boat.

“It could have been old debris from another wreck or something floating around, we couldn’t tell,” said Coast Guard spokesman Shawn Eggert.

As the week went on, more debris has washed ashore, including a piece of a mast Wednesday, Scott said. Although the debris is not stamped with the name of the boat, the Connie B., authorities are presuming it came from the missing boat.

“It’s clear the boat suffered some kind of catastrophic event,” Scott said, noting that debris recovered from the beach has been small in size. “We can’t tell if that is a result of incident itself or if it was busted up by the surf before it got here.”

Near Teri Dascher’s body authorities found a prescription bottle with her name, and dentures stamped with her last name led to a positive identification, Scott said.

A Coast Guard cutter, a helicopter and C-130 airplane searched for the sailboat Friday, covering more than 1,000-square-miles, Eggert said. The search was suspended and will not resume unless authorities receive information that could narrow the search area.

Scott said those efforts were hampered by bad weather and because the 25-foot boat, inadequate for a trans-oceanic cruise, did not have a navigation plan on file.

Herald Editor Celeste Cornish contributed to this report.