Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr plane crash, Digi Mart USA News: Rachael Reed had visited the Honduran island of Roatán for decades, first traveling there as a teenager. During the COVID-19 pandemic she and her partner, Charmi Fehr, spent their quarantine on the island.
In 2023 the couple settled in Roatán and became owners of the Arca Boutique Hotel, a boutique property on the island. On Sunday, their love story ended abruptly when the private plane they were traveling in crashed.
Reed and Fehr were flying with businessman Adam Robinson and his family, whom they described as friends, on a trip from Austin to the Bahamas. The Learjet crashed near Greenacres and Palm Beach, Florida, and all nine people on board were killed.
Friends and relatives mourned the couple on social media. They shared memories of Fehr’s childhood in Paraguay and of Reed’s school years in Oklahoma.
Whitney Pyle worked alongside Reed when she was an intensive care nurse. Pyle told Business Insider (BI) that Reed showed great care to hospitalized patients and their families in their final days.
“It is very hard to watch,” Pyle said. “What she once gave to patients and their families, her own family is now going through.”
Reed, according to her LinkedIn profile, completed her nursing degree at the University of Central Oklahoma. While studying she worked as a Red Cross representative, and she quickly took nursing positions in her home state and in San Diego, the profile says.
Jason Suttles worked with Reed shortly after she graduated in the mid-2010s. He described her as a “perfect team member,” attentive and open to feedback.
“She didn’t come straight out of university and act as if she already knew everything or as if anything we did was uninteresting to her,” Suttles told BI. “In nursing, where you have no one but your teammates, it is good to have good colleagues.”
On LinkedIn, Reed described her career as “diverse and cross-industry, including real estate, critical care and aesthetics.” She owned BrowBabe, a microblading studio in Oklahoma City. Pyle said that after they worked together as nurses, she referred her mother to Reed for treatments, and that Reed made people feel welcome.
The Oklahoma City studio is now run by Cassandra Barnes. In an Instagram post, Barnes called Reed the “original BrowBabe” and said she had been a friend and mentor who introduced her to the world of makeup.
“A part of her will always live on in my work and my passion for this industry,” Barnes wrote.
Reed was adventurous, hiking to waterfalls and scuba diving. In 2021 she combined her travels with a new business venture in real estate.
“Buying a home like this literally opened up the world of travel for me,” she wrote in her sister’s real estate listing. That year the couple also renovated and sold a house in Oklahoma City, and in June they considered selling another of her Oklahoma properties.
Travel also brought Reed and Fehr together. In 2019, according to travel blogger Madison Krigbaum, who visited the property, Reed was traveling alone in Peru.
Reed met Fehr, who had also traveled to the South American country from Paraguay, at a Peruvian hostel, the blogger wrote: “It was love at first sight.” The blogger wrote that Fehr “would later become her fiancé.” A photo shared by the families shows both Reed and Fehr wearing rings on their left hands.
Reed had a long connection to Roatán, an island off the north coast of Honduras. She first visited in the mid-2000s at age 15, when her mother volunteered there and helped build a school, according to the travel blog.
Reed said she had traveled to Roatán three to four times a year since that first visit.
In November 2019 Reed and Fehr traveled to Roatán with their poodle, Marlie. What was originally planned as a short stay was extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After a period of isolation, the couple grew accustomed to island life and befriended their neighbors. “We take care of each other,” she wrote at the time.
“We bake bread for each other.”
After months of boating, fishing and meditating, Reed and Fehr returned to the United States, according to the travel blog, once pandemic restrictions were lifted. Eventually they split their time between the U.S.
and the island.
Reed loved Roatán deeply. In a video posted on Facebook, her friend Bryon Robbins said she cared equally for the island’s children and animals and once chased down a man’s motorcycle after he abused a dog.
They could talk for hours, he said. “She could make a 50-minute drive to the east end feel like 15 minutes,” he said.
In 2023 Reed and Fehr took on a new connection to the island as hoteliers, co-owning the 16-room Arca Boutique Hotel, a beachfront property promising stunning views and Caribbean cuisine. A review of the hotel by Wanderluxe said Reed had “a passion for her second home” and personally helped guests book massages and find the island’s best bars and restaurants.
The hotel emphasized sustainability, which it said was “woven into every detail,” according to an Instagram post. Reed and Fehr installed energy-efficient lighting, eliminated single-use straws and packaging, and said they worked only with tour operators committed to the island’s natural beauty.
Guests appeared to be enthusiastic. The hotel has an average rating of 4.9 stars on TripAdvisor.
“Both owners were so friendly and knew us by name on the first day,” one reviewer wrote.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Arca said Reed and Fehr were far more than the hotel’s owners. “They were family,” the hotel wrote.
“They believed in us, inspired us and gave us the chance to be part of something truly special.”
Reed knew, as anyone does, that life can change in an instant, and that is why each moment must be enjoyed. “I have learned that our plans are mostly pretty ridiculous,” she wrote in a blog post from the pandemic period.
“Things can change in a moment.”
