Gaps in Communication Hurt Search for Snowbound Family
By PETER SLEETH, STEVE SUO, MICHELLE ROBERTS AND ELIZABETH SUH
Newhouse News Service
12/18/06
Searchers failed to exploit vital clues in the hunt for the family of
James
Kim, including several crucial pieces of evidence that surfaced in the
final hours of his life, when he was freezing, alone and lost in the
woods.
An examination by The Oregonian newspaper found a search plagued by
confusion, gaps in communication, and failures of leadership in
Josephine
County, where the Kim family was found.
Lt. Brian Powers, the Oregon State Police commander in the region, said
the
lack of a central command prompted him to take control Sunday, Dec. 3,
the
day before Kati Kim and her two daughters were found alive. At the
time,
the search was sprawling over four counties, each with legal authority
to
conduct its own operations.
"I knew we had information gaps that weren't being filled, and I just
felt
like the Oregon State Police could provide something to that effort to
make
sure that family gets found," Powers said. "If that effort meant
knocking
down some jurisdictional lines ... I guess that is what it was."
In the end, the family was found by a volunteer pilot, one of several
key
breakthroughs achieved by people not connected to the official search.
The
confirmation that the family was south of Roseburg came from a citizen
tipster; and the cell phone evidence narrowing the search was provided
by
amateur detectives at an Oregon wireless carrier.
Many of the key missteps came in Josephine County. The
search-and-rescue
coordinator now acknowledges she was overwhelmed by the demands of the
search. She failed to call for help from the National Guard, which
meant
that heat-detecting helicopters stayed on the ground in the crucial
two
nights James Kim slept in the forest.
Her direct supervisor, an undersheriff in his last week on the job,
said he
ignored a late-night call from her about the case because he was
watching
an Oregon State football game on television.
Perhaps the most significant lost opportunity came on Sunday, Dec. 3,
when
two helicopter pilots discovered tire tracks on the snow-encrusted
logging
road that led directly to the Kims' marooned car. Randy Jones, the
second
pilot, landed on the road and directly confirmed the sighting, which
he
said he relayed to Josephine County dispatchers.
A truck sent to check the road turned back a few hours later, stymied
by
the deep snow. The searchers filed a report that evening saying they
had
seen "lots of tire and foot tracks" and that their assignment was "not
completed."
Although helicopters were available that day, none was sent, and
Powers
said he was never told of the sighting.
"That's new information to me," Powers said Friday. "That is critical
information that should have gotten to me. I was there all day Sunday
and I
don't ever remember hearing the information we found foot traffic or
we
found vehicle traffic, because that would have been a priority. We
would
have went there at night."
The Kims James, Kati, Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months spent
Thanksgiving
in Seattle visiting relatives. On Saturday, Nov. 25, they were headed
south
on Interstate 5, bound for the coastal town of Gold Beach. They made a
simple mistake on the dark highway, missing the turnoff for U.S. 42,
the
best route to the Oregon Coast.
As the hour grew late, the Kims turned down Bear Camp Road, a Forest
Service road that appears on the map to be a straight shot to the
coast.
They drove past signs that said the road was impassable in winter.
The family climbed into the mountains, the elevation turning the icy
rain
into a wet snow. Less than 20 miles off the highway, the road forked.
To the left: Bear Camp Road headed farther up the mountains. To the
right:
what looked like a more promising route, a wide paved expanse that
headed
downhill. It was logging road 34-8-36, a wrong turn so notorious it is
the
only road in this backcountry that the Bureau of Land Management
routinely
gates in the winter to protect travelers.
The gate was open, BLM officials would later acknowledge, because the
bureau had failed to follow normal procedure. The Kims plunged ahead,
snaking their way deeper and deeper into the forest. Up and down the
roads
they drove, traveling 21 miles on the logging road.
On Sunday, Nov. 26, at 1:45 a.m., one of family's cell phones received
two
text messages. The radio signals traveled in a straight line from a
cellular tower 15 miles away. The text messages were handled by Edge
Wireless, a cell phone carrier.
A computer created a record of the call so that the Kims could be
charged
on their next bill. That record included a critical piece of
information:
the location of the tower that had relayed the message. It placed the
Kims
somewhere in a wedge-shaped piece of terrain.
Technology could save the Kims if the people searching for them
understood
how it worked. Fifteen minutes later, the family stopped for the night.
The
snow fell steadily.
When they awoke Sunday morning, they were trapped.
The Kims were not reported missing until Wednesday, Nov. 29, when
their
house sitter told San Francisco police they were two days overdue. By
the
end of the week, their family and Oregon law enforcement officials
were
frantically searching the western part of the state.
With no real clues, county sheriffs and State Police began driving the
logical routes between I-5 and the coast. The Oregon Air National
Guard
sent a Black Hawk helicopter aloft to search in Curry County.
Kim family members in California hired Carson Helicopter Services. By
noon
Friday, Dec. 1, the company had three choppers in the air.
In Curry, Jackson and Josephine counties, which straddle the coastal
mountain range, law enforcement officials who knew the terrain best
focused
on Bear Camp Road. They had good reason. Over the past several years,
a
number of travelers trying to get to the coast had been stranded
there.
Several had mistakenly turned down 34-8-36, the logging road on which
the
Kims' car was stuck.
On Friday afternoon, Sarah Rubrecht, Josephine County's emergency
services
manager, and Jason Stanton, a BLM deputy, set out for Bear Camp Road in
a
four-wheel-drive Ford Expedition.
Rubrecht said the drive made her "extremely car sick." She said she
and
Stanton decided to follow the signs to the coast as an inexperienced
traveler might do. When they came to the logging road, Stanton and
Rubrecht
went straight.
"What we didn't take into consideration is that it was snowing hard
the
night the Kims went through, and they couldn't see that sign to the
coast,"
Rubrecht said.
That same morning, John James, 45, the owner of Black Bar Lodge on the
Rogue River, had heard about the Kims on television and "had a hunch"
they
were up on that very spur road.
He and his brother went up the road on their snowmobiles. He said they
hit
bare ground after traveling about one mile. Before that, however, they
could see fresh tire tracks that had been snowed over recently.
Later that day, he ran into Rubrecht and Stanton on Bear Camp Road. He
says
he told them about the tracks and that someone needed to check the
logging
roads thoroughly.
Rubrecht, a 32-year-old former police dispatcher, does not recall
James
telling her she needed to check his road. On the contrary, she said
she
"lowered it on her priority list" because she recalls him saying he
had
checked it.
Rubrecht didn't call out search teams to inspect the logging roads.
That evening a witness reported seeing the Kims at a Denny's in
Roseburg.
The search grid was now about 2,000 square miles.
Another pair of volunteers had an idea that day that could narrow the
possibilities even further. They worked at the Medford office of Edge
Wireless, which has an extensive presence in southern Oregon.
Eric Fuqua, an engineer, and Noah Pugsley, a co-worker, knew that two
major
national carriers, Cingular and Verizon, lack cell sites in the area.
If
the Kims were customers of either company, any calls they made or
received
in Edge's territory would have created a record that would identify
which
cell tower carried the signal.
Each tower has three antennas pointed in different directions. Edge's
records would say which antenna transmitted the call, narrowing the
search
area to a wedge on the map.
Fuqua and Pugsley needed one thing to begin their search: the Kims'
cell
phone numbers.
Things were growing desperate inside the car that sheltered the Kim
family.
It had been a week since their last full meal and they had subsisted
on
berries and a few jars of baby food. They could get water by melting
snow.
But there was no heat; the car had run out of gas.
On Saturday, Dec. 2, at 7:45 a.m., James set out on the logging road
with
plans to return in a few hours.
Meanwhile, Fuqua was getting the family's cell phone numbers.
Edge President Donnie Castleman, who described Fuqua's and Pugsley's
roles,
said Fuqua called at 5 p.m. to say he'd made a crucial discovery: the
1:45
a.m. text messages. The signal, he said, was delivered by an antenna on
a
cell tower near Glendale. The antenna pointed west toward Bear Camp
Road.
By 6 p.m. that Saturday, Dec. 2, Fuqua was on the phone to the Oregon
State
Police. Soon after, State Police Lt. Powers called Rubrecht to report
Fuqua's discovery.
Earlier that day, she had declared Bear Camp Road clear. Rubrecht
spent
Friday night and much of Saturday pursuing a tip from a person who
claimed
he had seen the Kims driving down from the crest of Bear Camp Road
safely a
week earlier.
On the phone Saturday night, Powers and Rubrecht agreed to meet early
Sunday morning to refocus the search.
Powers said he had suspected for two days that the family was lost
near
Bear Camp Road, a view consistent with Fuqua's finding. There were
high-tech means available that might have exploited the discovery that
night, but no one called for their deployment.
The Oregon National Guard had a helicopter equipped with sensitive
heat
detectors that work best in the hours before dawn. It had spent
Saturday
searching roads in Curry County. Officials there said they were "going
to
pass the search to Josephine County."
The flight log says "there were no requests."
On Saturday night, Rubrecht tried to phone her boss, Josephine County
Undersheriff Brian Anderson, who was watching the Oregon State-Hawaii
game.
He said he chose not to take the call, noting that it was his day off.
Back on the logging road, Kati Kim and her children were huddled in the
car
without James, who had hiked at least 10 miles along the logging road
before turning down a steep hill into Big Windy Creek canyon.
He was dangerously exposed to the elements.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 3, Rubrecht, Powers, Stanton and Anderson met at
the
Josephine County Sheriff's Office. The searchers were having trouble
understanding Fuqua's map and so they asked him to drive over from
Medford.
As the authorities waited and deliberated, a local helicopter pilot set
out
on his own. Like Powers, John Rachor grew ever more certain over the
weekend where the Kim family was stranded.
At 10:30 a.m., he lifted off in his own four-seat helicopter, convinced
he
could find them. Rachor, who runs a string of Burger Kings, said he
flew
straight to Bear Camp Road and BLM Road 34-8-36.
Around noon, he said, he was flying low over the wrong turn the Kim
family
had taken. He spotted what appeared to be human footprints in the snow
and
car tire tracks, slightly obliterated by a recent snowfall.
Rachor was low on fuel and reluctantly decided to head for his home
base at
the Medford airport. There he met up with Randy Jones, a volunteer
pilot
for the Jackson County sheriff, and told him about the footprints and
tire
tracks. Jones flew to the site and landed on the narrow road.
The tracks, he discovered, were bear tracks. But Jones, too, saw tire
tracks on BLM Road 34-8-36. He radioed back to Josephine County
dispatchers
what he had seen.
At 1:35 p.m., a four-wheel-drive pickup was dispatched up the road.
The
two-person volunteer team was supposed to drive as far as possible up
the
road for a visual inspection. Six hours later, the team reported that
the
snow was too deep to make it more than several miles. Though they
reported
"Assignment Not Completed," it prompted no immediate action.
For the second straight night, the National Guard's heat-sensing
helicopter
sat on the tarmac in Salem, awaiting orders.
The next morning, Monday, Dec. 4, a snow cat began hacking its way down
the
logging road. It was about an hour away when Rachor returned to find
the
Kim family, farther down on the same road where he had spotted tire
tracks
the day before. Rubrecht said she didn't even know Rachor was in the
air.
"I had no clue John Rachor was in the air until after Kati was found,"
she
said. "No clue."
In fact, she said that "I really never felt like I had a handle on the
air
operation."
"I'm not afraid to tell anybody that it was overwhelming beyond
anything
I'd ever handled before," she said.
Two days later, James Kim's body was found face down in Big Windy
Creek.
Rescuers believe that in his final hours, he walked through icy,
neck-deep
waters, soaked to the bone, and suffering from hypothermia in his
effort to
save his family.
JB
OHV SAR 180
N6KML
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