El Dorado County search and rescue volunteers were called out Saturday afternoon, April 23, 1994, to look for a missing female jogger near the northern border of the county. The case ended tragically in a way that hasn't been heard of in California the last hundred years.
Barbara, the subject, left her home in Placerville about 8 a.m. Her plans were to drive to Auburn Lake Trails (ALT) near Cool and go jogging in the nearby Auburn State Recreation area; she often visited this area to run an 18 mile course. When she did not return by afternoon, her husband Pete became concerned and drove to ALT, where he found her empty car near the start of one of the equestrian trails. Pete was certain his wife in trouble. He notified ALT security, who called the Sheriff's Office.
Teams from Mounted, 4-wheel Drive, Sierra West, CARDA, and Search Management responded to the initial callout. Deputy Pat Harris, the Incident Commander, set up the initial command post outdoors at ALT Gate 3 just off of Highway 193, six miles from Cool. When people, horses and vehicles began arriving between 1600 and 1700, the numerous jogging routes in the area were the focus of the search.
Terrain in the search area is mainly steep foothills covered with oak trees, impenetrable brush, and poison oak. Paved roads and residential tracts crowd Auburn Lake Trails near Highway 193, but as you move north these give way to widely spaced homes in the forest and then to the oak-covered Auburn State Recreation area, where riding and hiking trails crisscross the hills. At the northern end of the search area, steep cliffs drop hundreds of feet in the American River Canyon. There is also a large quarry at the west end of the area.
Cold, intermittent rain had been falling all day, and it continued as search teams hit the trails in the late afternoon. As light faded, the rain seemed to increase while temperatures fell. The command post was moved to the nearby office of the Georgetown Divide Water District.
Not all clues had been washed away, however. Several teams discovered footprints, and dogs showed interest in several places, especially the "Old Campground" area. However, joggers' footprints running both ways caused some confusion. Also, searchers had no picture of Barbara's sole print, because she had parked near a well-used trailhead covered with many prints.
If the rain, dark and cold weren't enough, radio communications proved to be another trial. Teams quickly got out of range in the hilly terrain, especially on the far northern trails or down in the quarry. Two teams had to be diverted from search duties to man radio relay stations. Moreover, some radios seemed to die as soon as they got away from base camp, while others were disabled when rain got inside them.
It is testimony to the volunteers' character that teams pushed on well past midnight despite growing wetter and colder and more tired as each hour went by. However, there were no complaints when, at about 0200, CP called them in for some rest so they could resume in the morning.
A renewed and dramatically scaled up effort began before 0500 Sunday. More El Dorado members had arrived, and these were supplemented by about 20 volunteers from Placer County SAR, including a motorcycle unit. Helicopter 20 from the CHP also arrived and began searching from the air. At this point over 80 volunteers were taking part. Many of these people had gone sleepless all night.
In the daylight, it didn't take very long to find Barbara 's whereabouts. A couple of hours after the search got underway, Bob Taylor's mounted team was urgently summoned by a jogger, who reported that his friends had seen a water bottle and a visor off the side of a trail near Old Campground. The joggers had followed slide marks down the side of the hill, and had found Barbara's body below.
The condition of the body - dragged over 300 feet downhill and hidden with leaves and debris - suggested a homicide. The area was sealed off and treated as a crime scene. Doug Walker, however, was the first to suggest that the treatment of the body matched the habits of mountain lions, who hide their prey and return to it later. The accuracy of Doug's insight was revealed several hours later, when investigators found bite marks and determined that Barbara had indeed been killed by a mountain lion - the first person to be directly killed by a mountain lion in California a hundred years.
A week later, animal trackers from the Department of Fish and Game killed a female mountain who appeared to be the one that attacked Barbara, although final results were not in at the time this article was finished.
Barbara leaves behind her husband Pete, 52, a landscaper for the Mother Lode School District, and two children: Anna, 5, and Andrew, 8.