One of the grown daughters of a woman who was killed while biking in Pleasanton with her husband on Sunday afternoon described her mother today as an animal lover and a "bright, loving person."
Diana Hersevoort, 58, and her husband were riding north on Foothill Road, near Golden Eagle Way, at about 1 p.m. when the two were hit by a car, police said.
The car was driven by an 18-year-old Pleasanton man who was also heading north, police said. Hersevoort was thrown from her bicycle and pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband was taken to a hospital where he was treated for minor injuries and released.
"Physically, he's fine," the couple's daughter Heather Grimm, 30, said in a phone interview from her family's home in Dublin today. But she said her father told her that the scene keeps replaying over and over in his head, "like a horror movie."
The bicycle ride was a weekly tradition by the couple, who rode together in various parts of the Tri-Valley region, Grimm said.
They had been together for 35 years. Hersevoort had been a stay-at-home mom to Grimm and her older sister and was a proud grandmother to Grimm's 7-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, Grimm said.
Grimm said her mother loved animals, and that growing up, their house was a "zoo" with many cats and dogs.
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The couple still has two cats and three dogs at their Dublin home. Grimm said the driver who struck her parents has "broken my family."
"The world is a darker place without her," she said. Grimm said the local community and her extended family are providing support.
A high school friend of her mother's stopped by with five bags of groceries after the accident, even though he had never met the family before, she said. Grimm said a private celebration of Hersevoort's life is being planned -- and will take place outdoors because her mother loved nature. "She was a lover of animals and flowers," Grimm said.
Hersevoort was also a fan of tie-dyed clothing, something Grimm hopes people will wear to her memorial.
The accident remains under investigation, Pleasanton police Sgt. Bob Leong said. The driver has not been arrested, but police said he is not cooperating with their investigation. Leong said preliminary information indicates that Hersevoort and her husband were riding single-file in the bike lane on the side of the roadway when they were hit.
He said several witnesses have contacted police. "If we have enough to pursue a charge we will forward it" to the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, Leong said.
Grimm said her parents were safe and cautious people who followed the rules of the road while on their mountain bikes. She said her family doesn't see how the situation can be remedied through criminal charges or a lawsuit. "What was taken cannot be replaced," Grimm said.
