It was a recipe for disaster.

A 52-year-old man with a sketchy driving record piloting a bus for the very first time, possibly under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

A cargo of 41 passengers in a bus with no seat belts.

A shortcut down a narrow two-lane road that would have saved two miles of driving.

All of these things came together at 6:10 p.m. Sunday outside the Colusa County city of Williams, when Quintin J. Watts apparently fell asleep at the wheel, rolled the casino-bound bus he was driving and crashed, killing eight people and injuring 35.

Among the dead was the bus company's owner, 68-year-old Daniel Cobb, Watts' stepfather and the man who hired him last week as a favor.

Among the injured was Watts, a down-on-his-luck former truck driver and parolee who was upgraded from critical to fair condition Monday at Woodland Memorial Hospital and under arrest on a charge of driving under the influence.

Survivors of the crash told harrowing stories Monday of seeing Watts fall asleep as the bus swerved back and forth, and of Cobb making a futile effort to stop the crash.

"The driver was falling asleep, and he was trying to wake the driver up," said Liw Saechao, Cobb's business partner and the mother of his 8-year-old daughter. "Daniel grabbed the wheel and tried to put the bus brake on, and it was too late – it was already flipping.

"They said Daniel flew out of the bus and into the ditch."

Many of the passengers on the bus were regular patrons of Cobb's bus service, and several called Saechao after the crash to recount the last moments before the bus rolled over.

Saechao's son, Khae, said of Watts: "This was his first actual bus trip."

An off-duty Colusa County sheriff's deputy driving south on Lone Star Road spotted the bus driving erratically Sunday evening, said Stephen Bell, assistant chief of the CHP's northern division office.

The bus drifted to the right side of the road and back again, and then crossed over the road and hit the dirt to the left of the roadway, he said.

Several passengers were ejected from the bus when it crashed, and the CHP originally reported 10 fatalities Sunday night.

Officers combed the crash scene overnight and had to conduct several searches, including one with a helicopter using an infrared tracking device over rice fields. The agency revised the death toll Monday to eight.

The CHP is "reasonably sure" that they found everyone, Bell said.

But relatives and friends of crash victims spent much of Monday trying to find their loved ones, calling and visiting many of the eight hospitals from Chico to Sacramento that received victims.

Thaopor Yang and his wife, Cher Vang, spent a heart-wrenching morning in the reeds at the crash site searching for Vang's mother, Khou Yang, 67, who was on the bus with her husband.

Khou Yang's husband was thrown from the bus and was taken to a hospital for treatment. He suffered four broken ribs and had to have stitches on his head.

Chou Ma Vang told his son-in-law that he blacked out during the crash and when he regained consciousness, he didn't know where his wife was.

"'The bus flipped,'" Thaopor Yang said, relaying what his father-in-law told him. "'Everything was twisted, everything went everywhere. Everybody on board was everywhere.'"

Despite their search of the muddy crash scene Monday morning, the family had not been able to locate the mother. Later in the day, authorities confirmed she had died.

Watts, the father of three, underwent a blood test, but authorities would not say whether they suspected alcohol or drug use.

The Stockton man is a parolee with a long criminal and traffic record, and on Monday his adoptive mother said her son had been struggling to right an imperfect life.

"He was trying, that's why he took the job up there," said Chaney Mae Watts. "He didn't want his kids on welfare."

Her son once worked as a truck driver, but after he got out of prison recently, he couldn't find a job, she said.

He finally took the driving job in Sacramento.

Call The Bee's Sam Stanton, (916) 321-1091. Bee staff writers Kim Minugh and Chelsea Phua and researchers Pete Basofin and Sheila A. Kern contributed to this report.