ARVIN -- The family of 21-year-old Hugo Lopez Jimenez, the man who drowned Friday night in the Kern River, enjoyed the river on several occasions before his death.

"He liked going to the river in his free time to cool off, but he may have gotten overly confident in his ability to swim," Jimenez's brother, who did not want to be identified, told ABC 23.

Jimenez was swimming near the Upper Richbar campground Friday afternoon, when he became distressed in the current and went under, Search and Rescue officials said.

They say there was a delayed response to locating him because the people who reported the drowning went back to Arvin to tell his family.

"When his friends came to the house, I originally thought it was a joke, but I drove up and saw that it was true," Jimenez's brother says. "They wouldn't let me in the river to look for him, but the rescuers found him drowned."

A collection for funeral expenses is being taken at La Fogata Restaurant on Bear Mountain Boulevard in Arvin. The family says it is trying to raise enough money to have him buried in Mexico.