FRIENDS of a mom who was tragically killed alongside her daughter and nanny in a plane crash have revealed how she was “adopted” by her MAGA donor parents to fill the void they felt after losing another child in a separate tragedy.
Adina Azarian, 49, and her two-year-old daughter Aria were killed on Sunday when a twin-engine Cessna Citation owned by wealthy entrepreneur father John Rumpel crashed in a rural part of southwest Virginia.
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The doomed aircraft sparked panic after its pilot stopped responding to ground communications on Sunday afternoon.
Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled when the aircraft – which had departed from Elizabethton, Tennessee – crossed into restricted airspace over Washington, D.C.
The fighter jets reported that the pilot of the Cessna appeared to have passed out. The private aircraft later crashed into the ground in the Shenandoah Valley, killing all four people on board.
John Rumpel and his wife, Barbara, confirmed that their real estate broker daughter Adina and their two-year-old granddaughter Aria died in the wreck, along with their family nanny.
The couple – who are gun rights advocates and prominent Donald Trump donors – lost another daughter in 1994 following a scuba diving-related tragedy.
Friends of Adina’s revealed to The U.S. Sun that she is not the biological daughter of John and Barbara Rumpel – but the couple “adopted” her as an adult and played a prominent role in her life.
Raphael Avigdor, a fellow real estate broker and close friend of Adina’s who knew her for 15 years, said the single mom met the Rumpels while working as an agent at one of the residential buildings they owned in Manhattan several years ago.
“And they became very close,” said Avigdor, “as most people who knew Adina would do because she was a beautiful soul.
“John and Barbara had lost a daughter previously […] they loved and missed their daughter and so they kind of transferred all that love to Adina and she became their daughter.
“They were very much a big part of her life. They are successful people and Adina would fly back and forth quite a bit to see them, especially after she had her daughter.
“I don’t know if the adoption was legalized or not but they were all very close.”
‘A SWEET LADY’
Another friend of Adina’s, Lakhinder “JIT” Vohra, said the 49-year-old was incredibly private about her family but recently opened up about her biological mom, from whom she was estranged for several years.
According to Vohra, Adina only reconnected with her biological mom within the last couple of years.
The decision was prompted after she decided to conceive her daughter through IVF, he said.
“She told me her biological mom was a recovering alcoholic and that they were estranged,” said Vohra.
“She didn’t have any pictures of her family up inside her home and she didn’t share much about her other parents [John and Barbara Rumpel] – I had no idea she was flying on private jets.
“It was important for her to have a family […] but when she started IVF to have her daughter, during that process, she got back in touch with her mom.
“I don’t know much about her father but I think he was from the Middle East somewhere.”
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Vohra added that Adina was a Republican but didn’t necessarily share the Rumpels’ political views.
“She was a very open-minded person and had friends from all walks of life.
“She wasn’t NRA-crazy and she didn’t keep guns in her home or anything like that.
“She was just a very sweet lady living in the Hamptons, living her own life and running a very successful business.”
TRAGIC CRASH
A devastated John Rumpel told The New York Times on Monday that Adina, her daughter, and the family’s nanny were returning home to East Hampton after a four-day visit to his estate in North Carolina when the Cessna crashed “almost straight down at a high speed.”
The velocity of the impact left behind a crater and the wreckage was spread over a distance of 150 yards, he added.
Moments earlier, two F-16s were scrambled from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland after the Cessna entered the restricted airspace, prompting the emergency response to intercept the flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration called the pilot but received no response. The military then ordered the jets to intercept, green-lighting them to travel at supersonic speeds, causing a boom in the region.
NORAD said that when the jet was intercepted at about 3.20pm, “the pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest.”
John Rumpel said the plane tumbled out of the sky at a rate of 20,000 feet per minute.
A trained pilot himself, the 75-year-old theorized the plane may have lost pressurization while up in the air, causing the pilot and everyone else on board to lose consciousness.
“They all just would have gone to sleep and never woke up,” he told The Times while reportedly choking back tears.
John and Barbara had lost a daughter previously […] they loved and missed their daughter and so they kind of transferred all that love to Adina and she became their daughter.
Raphael Avigdor
Avigdor told The U.S. Sun that he spoke directly with John Rumpel earlier on Monday and described him as devastated, but added: “He’s been through a lot of this type of tragedy in his life so he understands the process and was quite lucid about everything.”
Still trying to get his own head around the tragedy, Avigdor said he will remember Adina as a “lovely person.”
“She was just such a lovely person and such a lovely daughter and so content with life. This is one of those difficult things to absorb.
“There will just be an empty spot in my heart for a lovely woman who developed to be a very true and dear friend to me.”
Another close friend of Adina’s, Sandy Castillo, tearfully remembered Adina as one of the most ambitious and selfless people she’d ever met.
“We are absolutely devastated,” said Castillo. “We will never forget her. She will be in our hearts forever and her sweet angel daughter, Aria, was a miracle and everything she ever wanted.
“[Before she had Aria] she was instrumental in the upbringing of my daughter.
“I was a single mom and Adina went out of her way to treat my daughter like her own. She was instrumental in her education and she was just the most generous person.
“She was always happy, never a victim, and always persevered through everything with a smile on her face.
“Just a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful human being.”
Similarly, Vohra memorialized Adina as a wonderful friend and mother who would go above and beyond for others.
He said: “The whole reason I’m doing this is because everyone should know what a wonderful person Adina was.
“She was a really amazing friend, so trusting and extremely kind and generous – and she helped me start my company.
“Adina set the bar so high in my life, I will always be comparing other women to her.
“I was so proud to be able to call her a friend [and] I’m heartbroken she’s gone.”
FAMILY TIES
While the FAA continues to investigate the circumstances leading up to Sunday’s deadly crash, more details about the Rumpel family have come to light.
John is the owner of the Florida-based company Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc. and Barbara is a member of the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum.
The couple are also large-scale donors to several conservative political candidates, including former President Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.
In 2020, the couple donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory PAC and gave thousands toward DeSantis’ successful Gubernatorial run.
Additionally, Barbara Rumpel has made donations to several other Republican candidates, including Herschel Walker.
The Rumpels have even committed their entire real estate portfolio to the pro-second amendment group.
“We want to leave a legacy that will help preserve this country as we know it and as it is meant to be,” Barbara wrote in a statement on an NRA’s website.
In an earlier family tragedy, they lost their 19-year-old daughter Victoria in 1994 during a scuba diving accident.
Following Victoria’s death, the Rumpels bought an 11-story building in Melbourne, Florida, which they named Victoria Landing.
The assisted living center is a tribute to their late daughter.
“John honors the memory of his daughter with the Victoria Landing name. With that honor comes the responsibility to make Victoria Landing the very best it can be…in commemoration of Victoria and in celebration of everything life can and should be,” according to its website.
The Rumpel family could not be reached for comment.
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