Frank Riki Jacosky's soul, it seems, went out with the tide. Although it appears to have come too soon -- the Oceanside man was only 45 -- it seems fitting that he died just after the ocean shifted with the low tide.

Jacosky was a man who lived for the surf. Arranged his whole life around it, his sister said.

"He would get up to surf every morning at 5 a.m.," sister Susan Medley said Thursday. "And some days, when the surf wasn't up, he'd just enjoy the water and hang out with the dolphins and the seals."

Surfing was the love of his life.

"He liked the peacefulness of it," his sister said. "No worries, no stress. … He was a laid-back kind of guy. Never ruffled anybody, tried to get along with everybody, never envied anybody. He had the perfect life, unless you were a Type A personality."

Money was "just not that important" to Jacosky, who worked as a waiter. "If he had enough money to surf and take care of himself, that was fine," Medley said of her brother's priorities. "When he had some money, he'd golf."

He worked at a slew of local restaurants over the years, including the El Torito in Oceanside, the La Costa Resort and Spa, and most recently at Carmela's Cucina Italiana in San Marcos.

Born at Camp Pendleton to a Marine Corps dad and a Japanese mom, Jacosky from an early age was drawn to the water. When he was still a preschooler, his family moved to Hawaii, near the beach, and whenever mom Shizue Jacosky couldn't find her little Riki, she knew he had probably "escaped to the ocean," sister Medley said.

A few years ago, the quiet man with a dry sense of humor that slid by most people appeared on Huell Howser's California Gold show, Medley said. Jacosky was the "40-year-old surfer with six-pack abs" whom Howser interviewed about the local surf scene as they stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean, she said.

Surprisingly, a stroke and a heart attack hit the fit Jacosky about six months ago, leaving him partially paralyzed. At first, he couldn't swallow, couldn't speak, and walked with a cane.

But he wanted to surf, and "his passion got him physically fit again," Medley said.

He worked to recover, and by the last few weeks of his life, even though he couldn't stand on the board, Jacosky was able to get on it and paddle out.

Jacosky died peacefully surrounded by his beloved family on July 22, his sister said. His death, she said, followed a second stroke.

"I think he was really happy the last few months," Medley said, noting that her brother knew his death would come soon. "He figured out the important things. I think he had them figured out before, but the interesting thing is that if he ever offended anybody, he went back in the last six months to tell them he was sorry. He had that last six months to think about what to do (with only a short time to live)."

He surfed up and down the coast, but Tamarack was the surf spot of choice for this 1978 Carlsbad High School graduate, who spent nearly every summer weekend of his childhood there after his family moved back to California. And it is there that his family and friends will honor his memory. On Sunday at 9 a.m., a group of them will paddle out from those shores, to celebrate the life and passion of a man who loved his ocean, one who left his surfboard to his 2-year-old nephew Kyle Jacosky.