Regina Smith’s son was swimming with her the day she disappeared. He accompanied his water-loving mother to the Black Creek gorge area of Noccalula Falls in Alabama. During their outdoor excursion, Regina’s son called out to her: “Mom, come back. You are floating too far away.” But she assured him she was OK as she continued floating on her raft.
Dawson Smith, another one of Regina’s sons, felt his mom was too comfortable in the water. This notion was confirmed when his brother lost sight of her on May 25, 2025. It was the last time her family would see her alive.
‘We’re going to miss Regina so much,’ her aunt said.
After Regina, 51, went missing on Sunday evening, search and rescue crews located her the following Tuesday, WBMA reports. Regina’s body was 200 feet from the mouth of the gorge. In the two days it took for the crews to find her, her family held out hope that she was still alive.
“[We were] hoping for a miracle,” Charlene Clutts, Regina’s aunt said, according to People. “We’re going to miss Regina so much,” Clutts continued. “We love her so much, all we can do now is hold onto her memories and just remember what a wonderful person she was.”
‘Her entire life was water,’ Dawson said of his mother.
Dawson said his mother was a dental hygienist whose entire life was water. “The second she found out she could buy a house on the lake, she did,” he told WBMA. “If we went over to see her, most of the time, we wouldn’t find her inside. If we went out to the lake, we’d find her out there.” Regina lived in Lincoln, Alabama, on Logan Martin Lake.
Initially, the family was hopeful.
Once her son lost sight of her, the search for Regina began. The authorities were involved, along with family and friends. “When my brother initially told me, he’d gotten out of the trail. It was dark, and it was raining,” Dawson said. “My initial thought was that my mom was trying to find her way out, and she would eventually find her way out. I’d held out hope. I prayed because that’s all I could do out there.”
Thermal drones weren’t showing anything.
When the search continued into Monday, Dawson started to believe too much time had passed. “I saw the state of the rapids, the thermal drones didn’t pick anything up, and the scent dogs kind of stopped in the area she was last seen,” he said. “In my mind, I kind of understood that my mom was going to turn up eventually and it would either have to do with the water getting so high that she turned up or it getting shallow again so that we could find her,” Dawson explained.
A search team used a rope to remove her body.
A search crew traveling by foot found Regina’s body around 11 a.m. A drone confirmed the sighting. The team used a rope to recover the body, lifting it to the top of the gorge. Fire Chief Vance Brown described the surrounding conditions as “treacherous.” Dawson believes his mom may have underestimated the dangers in the river.
“We do a lot of the lazy river and stuff in Pell City,” he said. “I think my mom maybe misjudged what she was dealing with. When she was floating away and she went out of vision. The last thing they heard her say was, ‘This is the best day of my life.'”
