DEATH PACT HELD TRAGIC MISTAKE

While a pair of young lovers carried out a suicide pact in the Oakland hills, the girl's father was frantically searching for them in Reno to offer them a "big church wedding."

"We never opposed their marriage. We would have done anything to see them happy." Henry Szio, 1038 E. 21st St., said today.

Heartbroken, he says he has no idea why his daughter, Mazie Soo Hoo, 18, and Edward Kwong, 21, took their lives.

In each other's arms, their bodies were found yesterday morning in Kwong's car parked on a lonely road off Skyline Blvd. Hoses led from the car's twin exhaust pipes and the engine was still running. In the glove compartment were suicide notes.

SEARCH TOLD

Szto flew to Reno late Sunday after finding a note from his daughter that is as mystifying to him as her death.

"Dear Mom and Dad," it began. "We love each other -- so we are going to Reno. Don't try to stop us. I love you. See you Tuesday."

The father said: "We couldn't understand it because we had never told them they couldn't get married. We hadn't talked about it -- except in a kidding way -- and then Mazie always answered, 'Oh no! We don't want to get married. We want to finish shcool.' "

After talking it over with his wife, Szto flew to Reno.

"We wanted them to come back and have a church wedding -- or at least a big reception. You know how families are about those things.

"But if they had wanted to get married in Reno, I would have stood up with them. I would have done anything," he said.

DEATH ENDS SEARCH

Szto's futile search for the couple ended yesterday when he learned of their deaths here.

Miss Soo Hoo, a sophomore at the University of California, was a "wonderful, happy girl," in the words of her father.

Sunday, before leaving at 2 p.m. on the pretext of "attending a meeting," she had baked a pie, lunched with her parents and laughed and chatted with her brother, Walther, 19.

Szto (the grocery store operator uses the old Chinese spelling of his name, while his daughter changed hers to Soo Hoo) recalls now that the only unusual remark the girl made was to tell him a "girl friend" would bring her home.

Usually, Szto said, he picked her up whenever she went to meetings.

The note was found by her surprised family a short time after Miss Soo Hoo left.

Later in the afternoon, Szto said, he went to the home of Kwong's mother, Mrs. Constance Kwong, 416 Sunnyslope St. Young Kwong's sister told Szto that her btother had been there for several hours, but had left at 5 p.m.

Kwong and the girl, who had been 'going steady" since they were students at Oakland High School, left notes addressed to various family members, but no clues as to why they wanted to die.

NO PEACE FOUND

"I have nothing to live for. I couldn't find peace, and death is so peaceful," Miss Soo Hoo wrote in one.

She requested that she be buried next to Kwong, since he "is the only boy I have ever loved."

The families have not decided whether or not this will be done, Szto said. They are awaiting arrival of Kwong's father here. He reportedly has beein in Burma.

The car with the young people's bodies was found by Niles Kinney, of 4152 Randolph Ave., a real estate man who was showing a lot to prospective buyers. Kwong, a Menlo College student, and Miss Soo Hoo had put the suicide notes in a cellophane bag before dying together.