NEW YORK (AP) — One passenger was a caretaker from Jamaica known for her generous portions of plantain porridge. Another was a luxury real estate broker, returning from a family visit with her 2-year-old daughter. The man behind the controls of the plane, last seen slumped in the cockpit, was a skilled aviator with decades of experience.

All four died Sunday when the private jet they were traveling in lost contact with air traffic controllers and crashed into a mountain in rural Virginia. At one point, the unresponsive Cessna Citation flew directly over Washington, prompting the launch of military fighter jets that set off a sonic boom around the capital region.

As federal investigators continue to piece together what happened, new details are emerging about the people who lost their lives in a tragedy that has left friends and family reeling from the Hamptons to South Florida.

Adina Azarian, 49, was well known in New York’s real estate circles, a luxury broker whose portfolio of exclusive listings were the envy of colleagues, friends said. She conceived her daughter during the pandemic, then hired Evadnie Smith, 56, as a live-in nanny in her East Hampton home.

Known to the family as “Nanny V,” Smith traveled frequently with the mother and daughter, serving as a calming counterweight to Azarian’s occupation of high-stress deal-making.

“Adina used to joke that she’d hired the nanny not just for her daughter, but for herself,” recalled Raphael Avigdor, a longtime friend of the realtor. He said he was so impressed that he hired Smith’s step-sister to care for his mother in Florida.

Smith leaves behind one son in Jamaica, who could not be reached.

Prior to the crash, Azarian, her daughter Aria and Smith were in North Carolina to visit John and Barbara Rumpel. The couple said that when they met Azarian, she reminded them of their daughter, Victoria, who had died at age 19 in a scuba diving accident.

“We just grew closer and closer and closer together,” John Rumpel recalled.

They felt such a strong connection with Azarian that they decided to adopt her — a process that was finalized when Azarian was 40 years old. Seven years later, Azarian conceived her daughter, Aria, through in-vitro fertilization.

“I could not love a human being more than I loved her and my grandbaby,” Rumpel said.

In recent years, Azarian had also re-established contact with her biological mother, Christina Graham, of Nashua, New Hampshire. Graham said she learned of the death after it was announced by the Rumpels, but hadn’t heard from them directly.

“I have a hard time accepting that she’s gone,” Graham said. “We were building our relationships. We were getting there.”

Rumpel identified the pilot as Jeff Hefner.

Rumpel, who owns several planes, said he’d recently hired Hefner, 69, to work for him fulltime as a pilot and mechanic. He said he’d worked with Hefner previously for about five years.

“He was top shelf, absolutely top shelf,” Rumpel said of Hefner’s piloting skills. “I wouldn’t have had my daughter and my grandbaby fly with him if he wasn’t.”

Dan Newlin, an attorney who heads a Florida law firm where Hefner worked as a flight captain, said Hefner was “a highly accomplished and skilled aviator” who flew for 25 years as a captain with Southwest Airlines and had more than 25,000 flight hours. After retiring from Southwest, Hefner became certified to fly numerous private aircraft, Newlin said in an email. He said Hefner was married with three children.

Officials said the pilot stopped responding to air traffic control instructions within minutes of taking off from Tennessee. The plane flew to New York, near its destination on Long Island, then reversed course, flying directly over Washington.

Fighter pilots tasked with intercepting the wayward flight said Hefner appeared to be unresponsive and slumped over, according to officials.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation, though experts said a loss of pressurization inside the cabin was the leading theory.

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Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia

Nestle is piloting a scheme to give cash to coffee farmers who grow beans sustainably as part of its plan to halve greenhouse gas emissions in its coffee business by 2030, the food company said on Tuesday.

The move comes as major consumer goods companies face increased reputational and legal pressure to clean up their supply chains globally.

Nestle, the world’s largest packaged food company has pledged to spend $1 billion by 2030 on its plan to source coffee sustainably, which now includes efforts to boost farmer income.

The company said it has, under the plan, offered some 3,000 coffee farmers in developing countries like Ivory Coast, Indonesia and Mexico conditional cash incentives to encourage them to transition to regenerative agricultural practices.

These include using organic fertilisers to improve soil fertility, planting shade trees that protect coffee beans and intercropping to preserve biodiversity. The latter two measures also aim to give farmers additional revenue streams.

VIRGINIA BUSINESS OWNERS RENOVATING A COFFEE SHOP DISCOVER MYSTERIOUS VAULT HIDDEN WITHIN THE WALLS

“We have observed encouraging trends, including improved incomes in some countries, and increased adoption of important regenerative practices,” said environmental group Rainforest Alliance, which helps Nestle conduct impact assessments.

A major coffee report published in 2021 said there was little evidence that efforts by the world’s top coffee firms to protect human rights and the environment were having any impact, with most farmers unable to fund sustainable coffee farming.

Partly as a result of failed voluntary efforts by companies to source sustainably, the European Union has agreed a landmark law aimed at preventing companies importing commodities and related products linked to deforestation anywhere in the world.

The coffee sector is valued at $200-250 billion a year at the retail level, based on the report, but producing countries receive less than 10% of that value when exporting beans, and farmers even less than that.

Around 125 million people around the world depend on coffee for their livelihoods, while an estimated 80% of coffee-farming families live at or below the poverty line, according to non-profit organisations Fairtrade and Technoserve.

The European Union’s green ambitions will only be attained if both citizens and companies take responsibility, political and corporate leaders said on Tuesday at a Green Week event in Brussels.

Green Week is the EU’s annual event to showcase the bloc’s climate projects and policies and the European Commission launched two days of debates and conferences in Brussels on Tuesday, with the aim of achieving a climate-neutral world. 

The political leaders present stressed the need to change mentalities and, above all, to involve citizens. 

“We haven’t done enough. We as leaders we need to go deeper on regions and on our cities and to talk with our citizens. Why? Because sometimes we are talking so technical, so many technicalities,” Emil Boc, the Mayor of Cluj-Napoca in Romania, told Euronews.

“People don’t pay attention to technicalities if you don’t express your words, your language according with their level of understanding and having a concrete aspect of their lives.”

The corporate world was also represented at the conference, defending the balance they seek between profit and climate commitment.

One of them was Isabelle Guyader, Sustainable Development Manager for retail company Decathlon.

“I don’t really like putting responsibility on the shoulders of consumers,” she told Euronews.

“I like us to take full responsibility. Our role is to help them consume more responsibly because I think everyone wants to consume responsibly. But society isn’t yet ready for that.”