Body found at the base of a cliff on St. George Island

Updated: December 5, 2017 Published: December 5, 2017

St. George is located in the Pribilof Islands, 250 miles northwest of Unalaska.

Villagers on the Bering Sea island of St. George were working Monday to recover a man's body found at the bottom of a sheer cliff, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Community members identified the body as Serge Lekanof, 25, troopers said. Roughly 100 people live on St. George. Lekanof has been missing since the early morning hours of Nov. 29, when witnesses said he had been drinking before walking away from his home, troopers said.

His body was spotted Friday on at beach at the bottom of the cliff. Because of rough water and rocks falling from the cliff, villagers could not immediately reach it. Saturday morning, at low tide, it was no longer there, but reappeared Monday and villagers renewed their recovery effort, troopers said.

Julia O'Malley

Anchorage-based Julia O'Malley is a former ADN reporter, columnist and editor. She received James Beard national food writing awards in 2024 and 2018, and a collection of her work, "The Whale and the Cupcake: Stories of Subsistence, Longing, and Community in Alaska," was published in 2019. She's currently a guest curator at the Anchorage Museum.