Few Clues In Coach's Suicide -- Death Leaves Shock At Schools In Edmonds And Woodinville

At Woodinville and Edmonds-Woodway high schools, students and staff are still trying to piece together answers.

There are no solutions to look up in the back of the book this time. Randy Stubbs' private life was his own, and he didn't leave behind many clues when he apparently hanged himself over the Memorial Day weekend.

Stubbs, 35, was a baseball coach at Edmonds-Woodway and was a fixture as a campus superviser at Woodinville High. He had attracted attention last fall as the single father whose adopted son, Adam Cornell-Stubbs, was presented the Boys and Girls Club of America's National Youth of the Year Award by President Bush.

At Woodinville High in the Northshore district,Stubbs' death was the fourth of a staff member or student in the past 18 months.

Earlier this year, a car struck and killed a popular junior in front of many witnesses at the school, while stomach cancer and pneumonia claimed the lives of two Woodinville faculty members in late 1989 and early 1990.

"You begin to think you're on some kind of cosmic mailing list you don't want to be on," said Principal David Jones.

At Edmonds-Woodway High in the Edmonds district, Stubbs' death brought back painful memories for Principal Rainer Houser, who learned to deal with campus death during his stint as a high-school principal in Chehalis.

"The critical thing is to look out for the students," said Houser. "It's the total unexpected nature of this - no one could really anticipate it, so when it happens it really is a shock."

Because Stubbs committed suicide, his death leaves that many more questions.

"It makes it that much more difficult when we can't help them with the answers," Houser said.

An Edmonds-Woodway assistant baseball coach found Stubbs' body at the old Edmonds High about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. He had hanged himself in an equipment shack that the baseball team had converted into a team clubhouse.

It was believed that his body had been there through the weekend. He failed to show up for a shift as a volunteer firefighter in Kenmore Friday night.

The Snohomish County medical examiner confirmed the death was a suicide.

Stubbs was an intensely private person whose life's details were a mystery, even to people he had worked with for years. Some told of Stubbs' pride over his 18-year-old adopted son's upcoming graduation from Woodinville and a possible new romance in Stubbs' life, but specifics often conflicted.

Adam Cornell-Stubbs, Woodinville's student-body president and an honor-roll student, had moved out of Stubbs' apartment Wednesday for the summer, according to his sister, Alex Hurlbert. Stubbs adopted Adam when he was 14.

Details regarding memorial services were not available. No services were planned on either high-school campus.

Stubbs was well-known as a campus security worker and was assigned the duty of handing out campus parking tickets, Jones said. "He wasn't a teacher, but he was everything else," he added.

He was less visible at Edmonds-Woodway, where he had been coaching for three years.

"Randy was really a mystery guy," said Mike Anderson, the Edmonds-Woodway football coach. "He coached for me for three years and he was my defensive coordinator for two. I don't know a thing about his family. I knew he had an adopted son, but other than that, I don't know a thing about his personal life."

Houser, like Jones at Woodinville, held a staff meeting yesterday morning and asked teachers to deliver the news of Stubbs' death to their first-period classes.

For Houser, the tragedy recalled memories of a student-body president at W.F. West High in Chehalis, with a reputation as an attractive, all-American honor-roll student, who committed suicide.

"The important thing was to get students to understand that suicide is an unacceptable action for problem solution," he said. "We could have easily lost half a dozen more students. That's my concern - the folks who are living."

-- Times reporter Steve Christilaw contributed to this report.