The Region - News from Nov. 21, 1986

An 87-year-old San Diego man who was buried under thousands of his books during an earthquake last summer was found dead in his downtown residential hotel room. Anthony Cima, who once described his 10,000-book collection as “part of the family,” had apparently been dead for several days, and possibly as long as a week, when San Diego Fire Department paramedics found his body on the floor of his room, a coroner’s office spokesman said. Last July, Cima had been pinned to his cot for more than 11 hours after an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale toppled piles of his beloved books that were stacked in his room.