Local jockey identified as Lake Del Valle drowning victim

A man who drowned in Lake Del Valle Tuesday evening has been identified by Alameda County coroner’s bureau as 23-year-old Shawn Spikes Jr. of San Francisco.

Spikes had rented a boat with a group of friends on the lake in unincorporated Alameda County south of Livermore. He went overboard near Swallow Bay, according to East Bay Regional Park District spokesman Dave Mason.

Divers with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue team along with police and fire crews with the EBRPD were called in around 6 p.m. Tuesday to look for the man, Mason said.

“We were out there last night until just after midnight, then we fired back up again at six in the morning,” sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said Wednesday.

Spikes’ body was recovered in the “late morning” Wednesday, Mason said.

Spikes was a local professional horse jockey who won his first race at Golden Gate Fields in Albany on thoroughbred Game Seeker in March 2016.

The drowning was the second in five days at the lake. Los Gatos resident Florencio Rodriguez Pureco, 31, died in a boating accident Saturday, according to the Alameda County coroner’s bureau.

Mason said Pureco also rented a boat with friends and family and somehow fell into the water. His body was found Sunday.

Neither man appeared to have been wearing a life vest, Mason said. The men drowned during the Bay Area’s recent heat wave, when temperatures spiked into the 100s in the hottest areas of the region and people flocked to beaches and lakes seeking relief.

Mason advised people to wear life vests and swim in lifeguard-supervised areas.