If you visited – or maybe flew over – Law Street beach a few weeks ago you may have wondered who Bärli is and did she say “Yes.”
On May 12, and for a few days after, spelled out in 20 by 15 foot letters created by stones and seaweed in the sand, was the message “Marry me Bärli?” Austrian native Marlon Rechberger, CEO of Solpal Inc. in Pacific Beach, met Aimee Crafton (nicknamed Bärli, German for “little bear”) at Firehouse restaurant on Super Bowl Sunday two years ago. He approached the green-eyed flaxen-haired beauty because he thought she looked European. It turned out that Crafton is American, but that didn’t stop the sparks from flying between the two.
They spent the next couple of years getting to know each other and falling in love. As frequent business travelers, they would often extend their trips to spend extra time with each other at each destination. Little did Crafton know, this special part of their relationship would later lead to Rechberger’s extravagant proposal. Rechberger wanted to incorporate their traveling history into the proposal so he enlisted the pilot of a 1920s-era bi-plane to take him and Crafton for an afternoon ride on May 12. That morning, Rechberger and five of his friends started preparing the beach for the big moment. They worked tirelessly for three hours, much longer than they originally anticipated, to get things just right. Originally, they thought it would be easy to just carve letters into the beach, letting the darker wet sand show from below. However, the sand dried too quickly and they had to improvise with stones and seaweed. “The seaweed was the dirtiest,” Rechberger said, “You know seaweed – it smells, and there are lots of flies. Also, since it was the morning, the dogs were still allowed on the beach and they kept ‘marking’ it.”
But all their hard work was worth the effort. Later that day, 500 feet above the beach, Rechberger turned to Crafton and asked her to look at the letters in the sand. While she was looking down to where he was pointing, he pulled out an engagement ring from his pocket and “put it right in front of her face where he knew she’d see it.” She said “yes.”
The letters were visible for several days after the proposal, and the pilot told Rechberger that whenever he flew over them, he would tell his passengers about the romantic guy who made an incredibly lucky woman very happy.