|
Tracking Finds a 9-year-old Girl
September 2000
Sheriff's Deputies got a crash course in SAR field work and made a nick-of-time find near Sly Park on Saturday afternoon, September 2, 2000.
Hailey, a 9-year-old girl, got lost when she and her two sisters parted company. The three girls had been on a hike near Jenkinson Lake where their family was camped, but they had disagreed on how to get back, and Hailey and her sisters split up. When the sisters returned without her late in the afternoon, her parents called the Sheriff's Department, and SAR teams responded to the campsite near the extreme northeast corner of the lake.
As SAR set up a command post in the Kamloop campground, Sheriff's Deputies and Forest Service staff were already combing the area around the campsite, the shoreline and the network of dirt roads nearby. It had been raining earlier that day, so the underbrush was wet and the roads were muddy. Some of the deputies went home and fetched their personal ATVs.
Deputy Jim Byers was searching Park Creek Road in a Sheriff's 4WD when he spotted a wet sweatshirt on the ground near the Five Corners intersection. Getting out to check closer, he found a child's footprints ascending up a side road, but the tracks vanished soon after they hit hard ground. Byers, unwittingly using superb SAR technique, found a stick, measured the child's stride, and continued to track the traces she left behind. The signs, heading uphill all the way, led to a narrow path and finally straight into thick brush where Byers could not follow.
Byers went back to his vehicle and drove as far up the road as he could. Killing the engine, he called Hailey's name on his PA system. From somewhere up on the hill above, he heard Hailey faintly calling, "Help me!"
Finding her was one thing, but getting to her was another. For half an hour, deputies on ATVs tried one road after another in a futile attempt to reach the girl. Finally, when they got within a hundred yards, they went crashing uphill on foot though the manzanita. When they reached the crest, they found the nine-year old wet, cold and shivering. Her lips were blue and her arms and legs were honeycombed with scratches, and no doubt poison oak. The deputies wrapped her in a jacket, carried her back to an ATV and drove her to Byers' truck.
Back down the road they met a waiting Medic unit and SAR members Bill Fisher, Linda Colombo and Paul Duer. After a brief check, the medics drove her to the entrance to Sly Park to meet her parents, and then to Marshall Hospital. The SAR was concluded just after dark.
(Note: Many SAR members were unsure where the Kamloops is. That's understandable — Sly Park has nine family campgrounds, five group camgrounds, an equestrian area, eight picnic sites, and two boat ramps. Get one of the free maps at the entrance and keep it with your gear.)
|