Wednesday, February 2, 2000

By D. PARVAZ
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Monte Donaldson had just started work on a short independent film. His fiancee, Colleen Whorley, had recently earned another promotion at Microsoft, where she worked as an art director.

	Colleen Whorley and Monte Donaldson: "That's what made them stand out. . . . It was their love for one another."

They planned a September wedding and a honeymoon to Indonesia and Ireland. But the young couple's bright plans for the future went down in the Pacific Ocean Monday when their Alaska Airlines jet crashed off the California coast.

They were young, and very much in love.

"I'd like them to be remembered for their degree of sensitivity," said Adam Suhl, 32, a close friend of the couple.

Suhl, along with his girlfriend, Mary Bisceglia, 23, has been house sitting for Whorley, 34, and Donaldson, 31.

Having attended a family reunion with Whorley's stepfather, John Sanchez, in Puerto Vallarta, the couple traveled for two more weeks before returning home to their cottagelike Wedgwood home.

"They were both lovers of beauty and harmony, and you could really hear that in Monte's music," said Suhl in a somewhat hushed voice, expressing the sadness and shock he's feeling.

Whorley loved photography, he said. One day, he believes, she would have gone far in that pursuit.

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Donaldson, a free-lance disc jockey who performed as DJ E.E.G., was known in local clubs for his ambient mixes.

"He was usually relegated to the chill room," Suhl said with a smile, referring to the mellow tempo of his music.

Donaldson also loved traveling and had a thing for collecting sentimental memorabilia -- rocks, fortune cookie messages and the like.

He was also unabashedly crazy about Whorley, sending her postcards from his travels in Asia last winter.

In one postcard, mailed from Thailand, Donaldson says he feels "ecstatic" when he think of spending the rest of his life with her.

Bisceglia said that in an e-mail Donaldson sent Suhl from Mexico, he said that he was falling in love with Whorley for the 10th time.

"That's what made them stand out. . . . It was their love for one another," said Bisceglia, sorting through the photographs documenting the couple's eight years to

gether.

It was that last trip to Asia that persuaded Donaldson to include Bali, Indonesia, along with Ireland, as part of his honeymoon plans.

"He liked what he saw there and he wanted to share that with her," said Suhl, who had gone on that trip with Donaldson.

Yesterday, Suhl and Bisceglia erected a shrine of sorts to honor their friends in the home the young couple had bought last year.

It includes photos of the couple, Whorley's favorite hat and scarf, Donaldson's rock collection and one of his particularly cool vintage shirts among other treasured items.

In the photos, Donaldson's darkly handsome features stand in contrast to Whorley's mop of wild curls and almost dreamy smile (which seems to appear in most of the dozens of photos stacked and scattered on the living room floor).

But he was always smiling when he was standing next to her.

P-I reporter D. Parvaz can be reached at 206-448-8095 or dparvaz@seattle-pi.com

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