DISCOVERY OF PARENTS' PLANE BRINGS HEALING : DAUGHTER MUST STILL COPE WITH ROLE IN '91 LAX CRASH.

Byline: Terri Hardy Daily News Staff Writer

Norman and Beverly Jean Wascher, a Thousand Oaks purchasing agent and his wife, took off from Eureka in their single-engine Aero Commander 114 on Father's Day 1977 and simply vanished.

The discovery of the Rockwell aircraft in a remote Humboldt County forest Thursday by lumber company workers - 19 years later - may at last bring some peace to Robin Wascher, the couple's daughter.

Wascher, who faced almost two decades of uncertainty over her parents' fate, was the former air traffic controller who in 1991 cleared a Boeing 737 jetliner to land atop a commuter jet, killing 34 people at Los Angeles International Airport.

On Saturday, the day after she learned that her parents' plane had been found, Wascher said she hoped the discovery will help her put her life back together.

``My family has been waiting 19 years for this,'' said Wascher from her Nevada home. ``We are all just unbelievably happy that we finally found the airplane and we can finally close this chapter in all of our lives.''

Pacific Lumber Co. workers were conducting a timber survey in a mountainous area near Scotia when they found the wreckage Thursday, according to the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department.

Scotia is located about 200 miles northwest of San Francisco.

At first, authorities believed the plane was an aircraft reported missing a year ago, but they learned it belonged to Wascher's parents after tracing its identification number.

Deputies found no human remains, but they did recover the couple's personal property, including identification, Wascher said.

``One side of the plane was wrecked, and they think animals might have drug them off,'' Wascher said. ``They don't think it's probable that they walked away. But they're going back to see if the seat belts were released.''

Deputies told Wascher that they will be bringing in dogs to search for skeletal remains.

Wascher, who was an air traffic controller before her parents were killed, has resolved to never work again as a controller.

The last time she did, on Feb. 1, 1991, she cleared the USAir Boeing 737 jetliner that landed atop a SkyWest commuter jet.

After an eight-month investigation, a National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the crash was not Wascher's fault but rather a result of flawed procedures at LAX.

It has been five years since the crash, but not a day goes by that Wascher isn't reminded of the accident. Wascher later went on disability and moved to Henderson, Nev., a suburb of Las Vegas.

``I loved my job and it was the hardest thing I've every had to go through,'' she said. ``The accident is always with me.''

Wascher admits to a sad distinction among air traffic controllers. She was involved in a major accident, yet lost family members in a plane crash.

``I know what people feel like in the L.A. accident,'' she said. ``It's really hard to deal with.''

Her parents had lived in Thousand Oaks since 1961, and Wascher grew up in the community, leaving at age 19 when she entered the Air Force.

She described her parents as a loving couple, inseparable from one another.

``My mom once told me that if they were to die, they would go together because they were extremely close,'' Wascher said.

The couple was en route to Oxnard from a visit to Northern California on June 19, 1977, when their Aero Commander was lost soon after takeoff from Eureka.

The plane was hidden all these years on a steep slope in mountainous terrain.

``(Deputies) think that maybe they went up the wrong box canyon and couldn't climb a ridge,'' Wascher said. ``They said if they'd had a little bit more power they could have made it.''

Wascher and her sisters - Heidi Wascher of Santa Barbara and Cherie Matis of Temecula - expect to find the closure they seek when they visit the crash site next week and later hold a memorial service.

``The first couple of years, it basically affected all of our lives pretty hard,'' Wascher said. ``We didn't know where our parent's plane was. It was amazing how a plane could disappear after being up only 15 minutes.''

While the discovery of the airplane will bring a measure of peace to Wascher's life, nothing can erase from the memory of Feb. 1, 1991, the day 34 people died on an LAX runway.

``That's tough to live with,'' she said.