The owner of the small plane that crashed in East Palo Alto was described Wednesday as a top engineer at Tesla Motors Inc., a proud mentor to high school robotics students and a methodical pilot.
Acquaintances fear that Doug Bourn, 56, of Santa Clara was flying the twin-engine Cessna 310 that flew into power lines just after taking off from the Palo Alto Airport on Wednesday morning, killing all three people aboard. Tesla confirmed that the victims worked at the company, but the Santa Clara County coroner's office said they remained unidentified as of Wednesday night.
Bourn "was the most careful and thorough pilot you could meet," said Nina Serpiello, who worked with him at Ideo, a product design firm in Palo Alto where Bourn was employed from 1995 to 2005. "It couldn't have been pilot error. Doug doesn't make mistakes."
Serpiello said Bourn was humble and generous. Tuesday night, he visited her at a home she recently rented in Redwood City. He not only brought her a phone and modem, but two solar-powered lights for her front yard.
"That was the kind of person he was," Serpiello said. "He was always there when you needed him, whether to help you move, or hang pictures, or figure out your Internet connection,"
Whenever someone tried to repay Bourn for something he did, Serpiello said, he gave the same reply: "I only do it because I love you."
On Wednesday, workers were mourning at Tesla and at Ideo. Also in mourning was a group of students at the all-girls Castilleja School in Palo Alto, where Bourn was a mentor to "Gatorbotics," a team that entered robotics competitions.
"He loved to see those girls discover what they could do," Serpiello said.
She said Bourn had been married twice but had no children. He was educated at Stanford and Michigan Technological University in Hougton, Mich.
At Tesla, Bourn shared responsibility for the design and testing of the power electronics module for the Tesla Roadster.
He held commercial pilot and flight instructor licenses, Serpiello said, and loved to sky dive and ride motorcycles. He also had plans to earn a helicopter pilot's license.
"That was his next adventure," she said. "He loved to fly."
Bourn flew often, Serpiello said, and taught others how to fly. He flew to appointments, to vacations, and to an annual aviation celebration in Oshkosh, Wis.
Bourn stockpiled gadgets, Serpiello said, because he liked them and because he liked to give them away.
"He always wanted to have something there for people when they needed it," she said. "He would collect things and fix things and then have them to offer. His house was full of that. If you ever needed anything to do with technology, Doug had it."
Bourn was at times a public face of Tesla, a leader in Silicon Valley's new green-tech industry. The position has garnered Tesla attention, praise and occasional criticism.
Its admirers credit Tesla with fundamentally changing the way Americans think of electric cars.
The Tesla Roadster, which hit the market in 2008, looks nothing like the previous generation of smaller, more modest plug-ins. Low, sleek and fast, the Roadster quickly became a green status symbol for politicians and celebrities.
The car's $109,000 price tag raised eyebrows and complaints. But Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk argued that catering to high-end sports car enthusiasts could give the electric car industry the foothold it needed to grow.
Such buyers would be more likely to try new technology, he argued, and a company that made cars for them - expensive cars - wouldn't need to sell many to make a profit.
When the federal government agreed last year to loan Tesla $465 million to develop two auto plants, one in Palo Alto and one in Southern California, critics complained that taxpayer money shouldn't be spent making cars for the rich. Most of the money will go toward building Tesla's next, less expensive car, a $57,400 sedan called the Model S.
