Volunteer Diver Juan Heredia Has Brought Closure to Families After Recovering 15 Missing People

In March 2024, volunteer diver Juan Heredia answered a distraught mother's public plea and, within minutes of entering the Calaveras River in Stockton, California, found 15-year-old Xavier Martinez where the mother feared he lay — beneath the shade of a riverside tree.

Heredia, 53, a former general contractor and certified scuba instructor who grew up diving in the murky waters of Argentina, says the search narrowed instinctively the moment he dove in. "He was like an angel," Heredia recalls of Xavier. "Something I never expected to see." For Xavier's mother, Amanda Martinez, the recovery was a profound shock and relief: "How are you able to find somebody in 30 minutes when it's been six days?"

The Stockton City Council later recognized Heredia with a key to the city. The attention brought more requests for help, and Heredia — who had already trained as a diver and taught scuba — began answering calls from families across California and Oregon.

From one recovery to many

Since the Stockton search, Heredia and his team have recovered 15 people at 10 different sites across California and Oregon. The cases span infants, children and adults lost to rivers and the ocean. Recoveries include a 7-year-old swept out at Big Sur, a 2-year-old found in Oregon, and multiple victims from rapidly moving inland waterways.

"It's bittersweet work," Heredia admits. "The night after is when it's hard for me to sleep, when it's hard for me to think about it. That's the worst part. In the water, I have one mission: finding that son or that daughter."

Angels Recovery Dive Team

In July, Heredia left construction and real estate work to focus full time on Angels Recovery Dive Team, a nonprofit he founded to support his volunteer efforts. His wife Mercedes and his children Camila and Matias — all trained divers — assist on recoveries. The team does not charge families for their work and relies on donations to cover expenses.

Heredia says he keeps every person he recovers close to his heart: "I remember every single name and every single place of every single son and daughter I've found." Families consistently praise his calm persistence and compassion — he prefers to use victims' first names rather than the word "bodies."

Dangerous searches and personal loss

The recoveries have taken the team into hazardous conditions. In one case at Rattlesnake Falls, Heredia reached a site other professional divers had deemed too dangerous; he trekked through rain and hail and dove on an injured ankle to locate three friends who had drowned trying to save one another. Observers say the three were still together when found on the riverbed.

The work is also personal. Mercedes' son Brian died in 2023 after a car accident that left him in a canal. That loss deepened the family's connection to other drowning tragedies: in one recovery the team recovered a vehicle with a mother and her infant inside in the same area where Brian's car went down.

"Every time I recover somebody," Heredia says, "they become part of my family."

Heredia and Angels Recovery Dive Team continue to respond to requests from families and authorities, offering specialized skills, local knowledge and unwavering determination to bring answers and closure during otherwise tragic uncertainty.