Florida Woman, 36, Dies After 980-Foot Fall in Italian Dolomites

A 36-year-old Florida woman died on Saturday, October 17, after falling roughly 980 feet from an exposed stretch of mountainside in Italy's Dolomites, near a high pass above the resort town of Canazei.

Michelle Alejandra Rubio Leiva, who worked in communications and marketing, is believed to have left the marked route to reach a panoramic spot near Forcella Pordoi when she lost her footing, the Trentino newspapers il Dolomiti and l'Adige reported. The spot sits about 2,750 meters up, roughly 9,000 feet above sea level.

The Trentino Alpine and Speleological Rescue Service said she fell approximately 300 meters. A doctor pronounced her dead at the scene.

She Was Minutes From the Cable Car

Rubio Leiva was not deep in the backcountry. She was on holiday with her family, who had planned to visit Rifugio Maria, the panoramic restaurant at the summit of Sass Pordoi, according to the local outlet il Dolomiti.

The accident site lies along the route between the upper station of the Sass Pordoi cable car and the Forcella Pordoi refuge, in the Sella mountain group. Il Dolomiti reported that she moved away from the path toward one of the area's viewpoints and fell about 200 meters from the station.

Her sister witnessed the fall. Local reports said it happened in front of her relatives.

The Call Came In Just Before Noon

Witnesses raised the alarm shortly before midday. The 112 emergency control center sent the Alta Val di Fassa station of the Trentino Alpine and Speleological Rescue Service along with an air ambulance.

One piece of luck barely mattered in the end. A mountain rescuer who happened to already be in the area reached the site fast and fed the helicopter crew exact coordinates, which cut down the search time across terrain where a person is hard to spot from the air.

Medical personnel were lowered onto the mountainside at around 12:30 p.m. Her injuries were fatal, and the emergency service doctor pronounced her dead on site.

Rescuers then moved her relatives first. The family was flown by helicopter down to Canazei, away from the recovery area, before a second flight brought her body off the mountain. It was handed over to the Carabinieri and the fire service. The operation ended at around 2:30 p.m.

The Rescue Service Never Mentioned a Photo

The detail that traveled around the world, that she stepped off the trail to take a photograph, comes from Italian press reports, not from the people who ran the rescue.

The official rescue account does not say she had been taking a picture. It says only that she slipped at an exposed point while on holiday with her family, according to the rescue service's description of the call.

Italian reports said she had moved away from the trail toward a scenic viewpoint and lost her balance.

Loose Gravel at 9,022 Feet

Forcella Pordoi is easy to get to and hard to walk. The pass is reachable by cable car, but the ground itself is steep and covered in loose gravel that makes footing unreliable, according to reports in Italy.

The accident happened at an altitude of approximately 2,750 meters, which is 9,022 feet above sea level. Routes past the mountain station include steep slopes, loose rock and exposed sections where losing your balance has nowhere good to end.

Sass Pordoi draws crowds for exactly the reason it is risky: enormous limestone walls and a drop-off view in every direction. A cable car carries visitors to a summit station about 9,680 feet up, and the area includes the observation point known as the Terrace of the Dolomites.

Plenty of people ride up in sneakers, eat lunch, take a few pictures and ride back down. The walking routes that branch off from the station are a different proposition, and the gap between those two experiences is about ten steps wide.

Born in Guatemala, Schooled in Utah, Working Out of Miami

Rubio Leiva was born in Guatemala and later moved to the United States. She graduated from Brigham Young University, and one report said she attended between 2008 and 2012.

Her career was in communications, marketing and business development, and she was most recently working at a firm in Miami, Corriere della Sera reported.

Friends and family described her on social media as bright, adventurous and independent, someone who loved travel and was happiest finding new places.

She Moved to Rome in 2025

In 2025, Rubio Leiva relocated to Rome to work as a digital nomad in consulting, an arrangement that let her keep her client work while living in Europe.

It was not immediately clear whether she was still living in Italy at the time of the accident or had flown back for the family trip. She had traveled to the Trentino region for a family holiday.

The Dolomites sit about a seven-hour drive north of Rome, in a region where American tourists are a steady part of the fall season. October brings thinner crowds, cold mornings and the kind of clear light that puts people on the edge of a viewpoint with a phone out.

The Carabinieri Have the Case

Her body was transferred to the Carabinieri, Italy's national gendarmerie, which is investigating the circumstances of the accident.

Investigators have not suggested anyone else was involved, and no findings have been released.

What Mountain Rescuers Tell Visitors

Mountain rescue organizations give the same advice every season: stay on the marked paths, wear footwear made for uneven ground, and keep off unstable rock and steep edges even when a spot looks easy to reach.

Loose gravel, wet rock and sudden changes in elevation do most of the damage in the Dolomites, and they do it to people who are not attempting anything technical. The route Rubio Leiva was on was a walking path between a cable car station and a mountain hut, not a climb.

The Dolomites are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and pull in millions of visitors a year, most of whom never leave the cable cars, the refuges and the groomed paths between them. The range's signature feature, those sheer pale rock faces, is also the reason a single slip near an edge can run 300 meters.

Rubio Leiva's family was flown off the mountain before the recovery began. The whole thing, from the call shortly before noon to the close of the operation at 2:30 p.m., took less than three hours.