Rachael Reed spent decades visiting the island of Roatán. She traveled to the Honduras locale in her teens and quarantined there with her partner, Charmi Fehr, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, she and Fehr put down roots and became owners of a boutique, idyllic hotel.
On Sunday, their love story was cut short.
Reed and Fehr were traveling from Austin to the Bahamas on a private plane with entrepreneur Adam Robinson and his family, whom they called friends. The Learjet crashed near Greenacres and Palm Beach, Florida, killing all nine of its occupants.
Across social media, friends and relatives mourned the couple. They commented on memories of Fehr from his childhood in Paraguay and Reed from her high school years in Oklahoma. Whitney Pyle worked with Reed when she was an ICU nurse. She told Business Insider that Reed showed great kindness to hospitalized patients and their families in their dying days.
“That’s very hard to see,” Pyle said. “What once she gave to patients and their families, now her family is going through.”
From nurse to brow artist
Reed graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a degree in nursing, according to her LinkedIn. While studying, Reed was a Red Cross representative. She quickly took on nursing gigs in-state and in San Diego, her profile says.
Jason Suttles worked with Reed shortly after she graduated in the mid-2010s. He considered her the “perfect teammate,” attentive and receptive to feedback.
“She didn’t come out of school acting like she knew everything, or that anything that we were doing wasn’t interesting to her,” Suttles told Business Insider. “In the nursing world, where you don’t have anybody but your teammates, it’s good to have good ones.”
Reed described her career as spanning “diverse industries, including real estate, critical care nursing, and aesthetics” on LinkedIn.
She owned BrowBabe, an Oklahoma City microblading studio. After they worked together as nurses, Pyle said that she connected her mother with Reed for services. She “made people feel welcomed,” Pyle said.
The Oklahoma City shop is now operated by Cassandra Barnes. In an Instagram post, Barnes called Reed the “original BrowBabe,” explaining that she was a friend and mentor who introduced her to the world of makeup.
“A piece of her will always live on in the work I do and the passion I have for this industry,” Barnes wrote.
A traveler’s love story
Reed was an adventure-seeker, hiking to waterfalls and scuba diving. In 2021, she linked her globe-trotting back to another business line: real estate. “Buying a house like this is literally what opened up my world of traveling,” she wrote on her sister’s home listing.
The couple also renovated and sold an Oklahoma City house in 2021, and considered selling another one of her Oklahoma properties in June.
Travel also brought Reed and Fehr together. In 2019, Reed was traveling solo in Peru, according to travel blogger Madison Krigbaum, who visited the property. Reed met Fehr, who was also visiting the South American country from Paraguay, at a Peruvian hostel, the blogger wrote: “It was love at first sight.”
The blogger wrote that Fehr would “later become her fiancé.” In an image shared by the families, both Reed and Fehr wear rings on their left hands.
Reed had long been connected to Roatán, an island off the northern coast of Honduras. She first visited in the mid-2000s at age 15. Her mother did nonprofit work and built a school there, according to the travel blog. Reed said that she has traveled to Roatán three to four times a year ever since that first trip.
In November 2019, Reed and Fehr traveled to Roatán with their poodle, Marlie. What was initially meant to be a shorter trip extended with the COVID-19 pandemic. After a period of isolation, the couple got used to island life and made friends with their neighbors. “We take care of each other,” she wrote at the time. “We bake bread for one another.”
After months of boating, fishing, and meditating, Reed and Fehr returned to the United States after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted, according to the travel blog. They eventually split time between the US and the island.
Reed loved Roatán deeply. In a video posted to Facebook, their friend Bryon Robbins said that she cared for the island’s children and animals alike, chasing after the motorcycle of a man who had abused a dog. They could talk and talk, he said.
“She would make a 50-minute ride to the east end feel like 15 minutes,” he said.
The new hoteliers
In 2023, Reed and Fehr established a new kind of connection to the island: a 16-room hotel.
The couple co-owned Arca Boutique Hotel, a beachfront property promising gorgeous views and Caribbean cuisine. A review of the hotel from Wanderluxe said that Reed was “passionate about her adopted second home,” personally helping guests book massages and find the island’s best bars and restaurants.
The hotel leaned into sustainability; it was “woven into every detail,” the hotel said in an Instagram post. Reed and Fehr installed energy-efficient lighting, eliminated single-use straws and food containers, and said they only worked with tour operators who showed a commitment to the island’s natural beauty.
Guests seemed to love it. The hotel has a 4.9-star average on TripAdvisor. “Both of the owners were so kind and knew us by name within the first day,” one reviewer wrote.
In a statement posted on Facebook, Arca said that Reed and Fehr were far more than the hotel’s owners. “They were family,” the hotel wrote. “They believed in us, inspired us, and gave us the opportunity to be part of something truly special.”
Reed knew as well as anyone else: life can change on a dime, so you have to enjoy every moment.
“I’ve learned that our plans are really pretty laughable most of the time,” she wrote in a pandemic-era blog post. “In the blink of an eye, things can change.”
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