For four days, the woman recovered from the Bay near the Ferry Building was a question with no name attached — and a suspicion that she might belong to a summer disaster. On Thursday, the Medical Examiner supplied the name: Jacklyn Trang Le, 69, of San Francisco.

The identification does two things at once. It gives a name to a death the city had described only as a body in the water, and it quietly retires the theory that had gathered around that body — that she was a passenger still missing from the Volare, the cabin cruiser that capsized near Alcatraz in July. Le was a Cathedral Hill resident with no established tie to the boat, and police found nothing suspicious. The one person still lost to the Volare, Jackie Boisa, remains missing.

San Francisco's medical examiner released Le's name on Thursday and signaled the office would disclose nothing more about the case. The identification was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle (external source, opens in a new tab), whose review of voter records placed her home in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood, and carried on the Bay City News wire. Crews had recovered her from the Bay on Sunday evening and pronounced her dead where she was found, and police reported nothing to suggest foul play. How and when she entered the water are the questions the office would not touch — the whole of what stays unknown.

The recovery that preceded the name was over quickly. A witness's 911 call brought officers to the waterfront near the Ferry Building around 7:35 p.m. on Aug. 16, and fire crews lifted the body out and declared the person dead at the scene, CBS Bay Area reported (external source, opens in a new tab). The crews carried it to Pier 22½ and handed it to the medical examiner, NBC Bay Area reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Four days passed before the office attached a name.

Jarod Toczko, who led the effort for Sector San Francisco, allowed that there was a "high possibility" people "could have been trapped" inside the sunken boat.

The wait invited a darker guess, because a body surfacing in the Bay this summer already carries weight. The Volare, a 49-foot cabin cruiser carrying about 20 people and a dog, capsized near Alcatraz on July 14 during an outing to spread a relative's ashes, the San Francisco Standard reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Sixteen people were rescued.

Three of those aboard have since been confirmed dead, ABC7 reported (external source, opens in a new tab): Clifford Boisa, 79, a retired Sutter County reserve deputy who was brought ashore alive but could not be revived; his sister Carol Boisa, 74, found near Point Diablo on July 25 and identified by the medical examiner; and Tondra Madruga, 58, a family friend recovered days after the boat went down. That leaves a single passenger unaccounted for — Clifford's wife, Jackie Boisa, now presumed dead.

The Coast Guard suspended its survivor search after crews swept 950 square nautical miles, ABC7 reported (external source, opens in a new tab). Cmdr. Jarod Toczko, who led the effort for Sector San Francisco, allowed that there was a "high possibility" people "could have been trapped" inside the sunken boat. Weeks later, any hope of recovering Jackie Boisa rests on machines reaching a wreck settled under roughly 130 feet of water, past the limit of safe diving.

None of that is Le's story, and the naming draws the line cleanly. The Volare's dead and missing belong to a Sacramento-area family that went into the water off Alcatraz; the woman recovered at the Ferry Building was a San Franciscan in her late 60s whose death police have described as unsuspicious. No investigator ever tied the two together, and nothing in the examiner's finding invites the connection.

Le's family inherits a familiar kind of quiet — an answer to who, and a closed door where how should be. For a short stretch, the Ferry Building recovery looked as if it might resolve one of the summer's unfinished searches. It resolved a different, smaller one instead, and left the Volare's last missing passenger where the tide has kept her.