San Francisco firefighters recovered a body from the bay a short distance off the Ferry Building late Sunday. The medical examiner has not identified the person, and police have not said whether the recovery is connected to the July 14 capsizing of the Volare — the disaster that left one passenger, Jackie Boisa, still missing after more than a month.

The wire version of this story is three sentences: a body was found, an investigation is open, no details released. What that brief can't carry is why the recovery lands differently in San Francisco than an ordinary bay death would — because for five weeks a Sacramento-area family has been waiting for one more body to surface, and officials will neither confirm nor rule out that this is it. This story reports exactly what is known, names what is not, and declines to answer the question everyone is asking, because only the coroner can.

San Francisco firefighters recovered a body from the bay a short distance off the Ferry Building late Sunday — and the question weighing on a Sacramento-area family remains officially unanswered: is this Jackie Boisa, the last passenger still unaccounted for from the Volare?

The city's medical examiner has not released the identity, age, or gender of the person found off the Embarcadero, nor how long the body had been in the water. Police have declined to say whether the recovery has any tie to the July 14 capsizing of the cabin cruiser Volare near Alcatraz, a disaster that killed at least three people and left a fourth, Jackie Boisa, missing after more than a month of searching. Until the coroner speaks, that link is neither confirmed nor ruled out — and it is worth being precise about what is and isn't known.

A 911 caller reported a possible water rescue off the Embarcadero at 7:37 p.m. Sunday, fire department spokesperson Samuel Menchaca told SFGATE, whose reporter Andrew Chamings first carried the recovery. Crews searched and pulled a body from the water, then carried it to the department's fireboat berth at Pier 22½, just south of the Ferry Building along the waterfront. The remains were handed to the coroner. An investigation is open, and, as ABC7 reported Monday (external source, opens in a new tab), "no other information has been released."

That silence is doing a lot of work. Both outlets that carried the recovery flagged the same open question and got the same non-answer: officials have not established whether the body has any connection to the Volare, the 49-foot vessel that overturned roughly 600 yards off Alcatraz Island on July 14 with 20 people aboard on a memorial outing. Menchaca sent further questions to the San Francisco Police Department, which had not publicly addressed the Volare angle as of Monday afternoon.

An investigation is open, and, as ABC7 reported Monday, "no other information has been released."

The toll is grim and, at this point, well documented. The San Francisco Standard's July 27 report (external source, opens in a new tab) laid it out: a wave struck the Volare and it sank within minutes, though 16 of the 20 aboard were rescued. Among the dead was Carol Boisa, 74, of Sacramento, the older sister of the boat's captain, John Boisa, who survived. Her remains were found on July 25 off Point Diablo, on the Marin side of the strait just outside the bridge, and confirmed two days later. The Standard reported that a brother, Clifford Boisa, 79, was pulled out alive but could not be revived, and that a fourth person aboard, 58-year-old Tondra Madruga, was also recovered. That accounting leaves one name outstanding: Clifford's wife, Jackie Boisa, who has never been found.

The group had gone out that afternoon to scatter the ashes of a relative — Maria Boisa, a nurse from Fremont who died 11 years earlier, the Standard reported. The Dissent has followed the recovery since the night of the capsizing, including the sonar location of the wreck more than 120 feet down and the hard question of whether raising it would be the only way to bring the missing home.

None of that history makes Sunday's body Jackie Boisa. Tides, currents, and the sheer size of the bay mean unidentified remains turn up along the central waterfront with some regularity, tied to no single event; the very currents that pushed Carol Boisa clear across to the ocean side of the strait cut both ways as an argument. The responsible position — and, for now, the official one — is that identity is a question to be answered by the coroner, not by inference.

What can be said is that a family that has already buried three of its own is waiting again, and that the agency best placed to end or extend that wait has so far said nothing. Identification can run for days. Anyone with information about the recovery is asked to contact SFPD. The Dissent will update this story when an identity is released.