Once Caneco responded, she displayed what she considered a quirk of her own: After just a few messages, she asked to switch to phone calls. “I'm someone who only talks on the phone for work,” she said. However, it seemed worth overcoming that aversion for Caneco. Her devotion to Beanhead, whose mysterious illness was never diagnosed before her death in late 2020, was part of it. So were her messages, which sounded sincere. “There was nothing unpleasant about him,” she said, including her background.
Born in Staten Island, Mr. Caneco joined the Navy in 2005 after earning a bachelor's degree in history and Middle Eastern studies from Fordham University. He was a naval flight officer until 2013, completing two combat deployments and then serving as a reservist until 2016 while studying law at Seton Hall University. He received a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown. Mrs. Hilton turned out to be a passionate fan of air travel stories. “I have a morbid fascination with commercial aviation disasters,” she said. “But I was obsessed with aircraft tracking in general.”
A week or two after their first phone call, they migrated to video chats and the miles between them became meaningless. On weekends they shared their screens and watched movies together, including the filmed version of the musical “Hamilton.” In August 2020, she was ready to take a leap of faith. “I decided I needed to escape, Covid be damned, and go to New York City to meet him,” she said. She didn't tell her family. “I think I said to a colleague, 'If I disappear, please avenge my death,'” she added.
Instead of disappearing from the face of the earth, he fell in love. After a first date on August 28, 2020, at Chama Mama, a restaurant in Chelsea, they returned to their hotel and hung out on the balcony, tracking flights on the app on their phone. Love took flight for both of them that night. “I remember thinking there were no differences or personal problems,” Caneco said. “I wanted to move the ball forward.”
