The smile on Austen Heinz's face was unguarded and brief. It was the involuntary,
small upturn of the corners the mouth that escapes when something genuinely makes you happy.
For Heinz, it was seeing the surfers at Del Mar. He raised his phone to snap a photo for a friend.
Mike Alfred saw the grin on his face, so he took his own photo of his friend's happiness.
Heinz’s long, curly brown hair is whipping back in the wind secured only by a green San Francisco hat. A black North Face vest, one he’s wearing in most photographs, covers his dress shirt.
“He smiled for a brief moment, and it was so beautiful,” Alfred said. "That's the last picture I have of him smiling."
Heinz’s love of surfing with his sister, Jean, would be noted in his obituary, published a month later.
The founder and CEO of Cambrian Genomics took his own life May 24, two weeks after the trip to Del Mar. He was 31.
[For more of this story go to http://www.mysanantonio.com/te...t-haunts-6360673.php]
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