By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The man found dead on the beach near Yachats State Park on Thursday, May 2, was a longtime Yachats-area resident and restaurant employee who had moved to Newport about two years ago to work there, his friends said Friday.
Michael S. Clift, 43, — known as Scott to his friends — was found Thursday morning on the beach north of the state park below West Third and Fourth streets. Oregon State Police said Wednesday, May 8, that an autopsy had not been done but that his death was not foul play.
Clift had been dropped off at the state park Tuesday afternoon by a Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy who had found him walking shoeless along U.S. Highway 101 north of Yachats. The sheriff’s office thought he was homeless.
Clift worked as a cook for about 10 years in many of Yachats’ restaurants, including The Adobe, LeRoy’s Blue Whale, the Underground Pub and Alder Bistro, said Vicky Prince, owner of Ya-hots Video Country Store, and her sister, Lisa Fogg, owner of the Alder. He also played saxophone during the occasional jam sessions around town.
“He was a very genuine guy,” Prince said Friday. “He never missed work. He had a very good work ethic.”
But friends in Yachats and Newport said Clift also struggled with addictions.
Clift was currently working at Local Ocean seafood restaurant in Newport. A co-worker called Prince when Clift didn’t show up for work this week. Clift apparently lived in a Newport apartment for awhile and then a motel. He did not have a car.
Lt. Cari Boyd of the Oregon State Police said Clift’s identification listed addresses in both Newport and Yachats.
Boyd confirmed a neighbor’s account that Clift had been dropped off at the state park Tuesday afternoon by a Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy.
“I just happened to be looking out my kitchen window when I saw the deputy dropping him off,” Dale Erlewine told YachatsNews.com.
Erlewine, who lives on West Second Street overlooking the park, said the man sat on a bench for a couple of hours Tuesday afternoon, then came to his door about 6:30 p.m. and appeared to be intoxicated. Erlewine said he asked the man to leave. A few hours later he spotted the man trying to enter his garage and called 9-1-1.
The sheriff’s office responded to the call, said patrol commander Lt. Brian Cameron. A deputy found the man, asked him to leave Erlewine’s property and warned he would be cited for trespassing if he returned. Erlewine said he did not see the man Wednesday.
Erlewine said the man had a dark, scraggly beard, glasses, weathered features, dark clothing, no shoes and was about 6 feet tall. That matched the police description of the body recovered from the beach Thursday.
Erlewine has been complaining for months to the city, the sheriff’s department and Oregon State Parks about people camping overnight in the park. City officials met once this winter with two sheriff’s deputies and a representative from Oregon State Parks to discuss the issue.
Cameron confirmed that a deputy dropped a man at the park Tuesday after finding him walking alongside U.S. Highway 101 north of Yachats. The man was shoeless and told the deputy he was “heading south,” Cameron said.
Cameron called it a “compassionate assist.”
“Did the deputy do anything wrong? No,” he said. “You try to be compassionate. But we’ll try to find a better place to go when we do a compassionate assist.”
“If there was a safe place to take the homeless in Lincoln County we’d do that,” he said. “But unfortunately that’s not the case.”
Dylan Anderson, who manages state parks in the area, said law enforcement dropping someone at a state park isn’t against any rules – the parks are open to anyone – but is unusual.
“It’s the first I’ve heard of them doing it in Yachats,” Anderson said.
We can do better.