SLIPPERY ROCK — Authorities Tuesday were in an Alaska Peninsula village investigating whether a 32-year-old teacher from Slippery Rock found dead off a road leading out of town was killed in a wolf attack, according to state and local officials.

The body of Candice Berner was discovered Monday evening off a roughly 7-mile gravel road leading to the Chignik Lake airstrip.

Miss Berner’s father, Bob Berner, reached in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, said Alaska State Troopers told the family their daughter had been killed in an “animal attack, possibly a wolf attack.” Troopers told him it was highly unusual and still under investigation, with the body on its way to Anchorage for an autopsy, he said.

“They wanted to make sure that nothing happened prior to the animal bite,” Berner said. “We’re totally shocked. You know, initial denial: This can’t be Candice.”

Berner described his daughter as “small and mighty,” a woman who liked to box, lift weights and run. She was training for a race and could get into a meditative state when running, he said.

An itinerant special education teacher based in Perryville, Miss Berner had just arrived in Chignik this week to work at the school there, said Lake and Peninsula Borough School District Chief Operating Officer Rick Luthi. Miss Berner had been with the district since August.

Her co-workers last saw her alive at the end of the workday Monday, Luthi said.

“She had made the comment that she wanted to get out and get some fresh air,” Luthi said. “We assumed that that meant a run for Candice, because she had a habit of doing that whenever she could.”

Troopers would not comment on the cause of death, saying the investigation is ongoing and that they are awaiting the results of the autopsy. Spokeswoman Megan Peters said the body showed signs of predation but declined to provide further details.

A spokeswoman for the Alaska State Police on Wednesday night said there was no new information in the case.

The body was found on regional corporation land within the borders of the Alaska Peninsula Wildlife Refuge and therefore was not in federal jurisdiction, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“I don’t think there’s any decision yet as to whether it was predated before or after death,” Woods said. “In other words, the (woman) might have died of something else and wolves might have found the body.”

Local residents have been concerned about recent wolf activity in the area, but she probably didn’t know that because she had just gotten to town, Luthi said.

Chignik Lake, with a population of roughly 100, is on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula about 475 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Unlimited wolf trapping is permitted in the area from Oct. 1 to April 30. Hunting regulations allow 10 wolves per person per day from Aug. 10 to May 25, said Fish and Game spokeswoman Jennifer Yuhas.

Wolf attacks on domestic animals in Alaska are not uncommon. A pack of wolves, at least some of them rabid, killed about a half-dozen sled dogs in Marshall in October 2007. But violent encounters with people are more rare.

“There’s only been one other case of a fatal wolf attack by a healthy, wild wolf in North America, and that happened in 2005 in northern Saskatchewan,” retired Fish and Game biologist Mark McNay said. “It is extremely rare. There have been other cases, of course, of wolves behaving aggressively toward people.



Herald Staff Writer Courtney L. Anderson contributed to this report and wrote the following story.



An “adventurous spirit, a risk taker,” Candice Berner jumped in her beat-up old Chevy after her 2000 graduation from Slippery Rock University and drove to California, her father Dr. Robert Berner said Wednesday.

She lived in her car, got cleaned up at the local Y and got her first job in Irvine, Calif., “all on her own, Berner said.

A 1996 graduate of Grove City High School, Miss Berner got her master’s degree in special education at The Rock in 2008 and found a job teaching in Alaska through a job fair, her father said. She always talked about going there or to Hawaii, he said.

“She was very family-oriented. Even though she was far away from us,” Berner said.

Her father called her “energetic” and said she “trusted in herself” and had a nurturing streak.

Miss Berner was out running after school by herself Monday and was likely attacked by a pack of wolves, her father said.

“It’s just her nature. There’s no way to prevent her from living her life,” he said, adding that she did a lot of surfing while she was in California and “survived turbulent periods in her life with a lot of lessons learned.”

Berner, an SRU professor of special education for 34 years, said his daughter liked to reach out to people who were different.

“She lived in 32 years what most people don’t accomplish in a lifetime,” Berner said. “I just feel bad for the (loss of the) contribution she was on the verge of making. She would’ve enriched a lot of other people’s lives.”

Berner said Candice started out as a sports management major, but she had an epiphany after working with an autistic child in an adapted physical education course that put her on the path to being an educator herself.

Berner said he taught his daughter in class twice. She got an A both times.

“I didn’t have a choice,” her dad said. “She earned them.”

Recently featured in the SRU alumni magazine, Miss Berner tried to encourage others to go to far away places and teach. Berner said she felt strongly that people should follow their passions.

He said the last six months of her life were the best she’d had, as she’d immersed herself in native Alaskan education.

“She was having a ball. She was truly enjoying herself up there,” Berner said, adding that she planned to go back next school year.

Candice baked cookies for the pilots of the small planes that travel the peninsula and gave people gifts from Wendell August Forge, he said. And she kept in frequent touch with family and friends through an Internet journal she titled “Adventures of an Alaskan Bush Teacher,” posting photos and tales of her life.

Folks don’t have cell phones or televisions in the subsistence village of 125 people where she lived, Berner said. In her blog she writes of new weather, wildlife and food experiences and the friends she made.

“She really reached out,” Berner said. “She was always about giving. She didn’t care about things.”

Candice did love her old car, which she called her “humbler,” Berner said. It took her all the way to California and home again and now is in his garage.

Miss Berner leaves her father of Slippery Rock, her mother Diana of Grove City and brothers Radley and Trent, both of California. Cunningham Funeral Home in Grove City is handling services for the family.

“She’s in peace now,” her father said. “We lost a real asset. Children are a gift.”



To read about Candice Berner’s life and adventures, visit her electronic journal at http://cberner.blogspot.com/