Hiker Search: No Shortage of Volunteers, Goodwill

There were all types. Old and young. Professionals and students. Experienced hikers and neophytes. But they all had one goal.

They wanted to help.

They wanted to find Nicholas Cendoya and Kyndall Jack, who had been lost in Trabuco Canyon since Easter night.

During the week, scores descended on Holy Jim Trail as a jumping off point in the search for the two Costa Mesa teens. The five-day ordeal finally ended Thursday afternoon when Jack, 18, was airlifted from the heavy underbrush that masks the Cleveland National Forest. The previous night, about a third of a mile away, Cendoya, 19, had been found by a hiker.

Whether the kids knew it or not, many people were pulling for them even though they didn’t have a vested interest.

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Among them was Rancho Santa Margarita councilman Brad McGirr, who left his Santa Ana law office Wednesday morning to join the search because he was frustrated three days had passed with no success.

“It was pretty chaotic, but it was heartening to see so many doing anything they could to help,” said McGirr, who drove his Hyundai Sonata as far as he could into the canyon before thumbing a ride with four Costa Mesa teenagers in a pickup truck the rest of the way.

“A lot of kids didn’t know them, or maybe they knew of them, but weren’t necessarily close friends. There were a lot of people like Justin Ames and Mike Proctor who were there because two kids are lost out there and why not? Why wouldn’t you help? It’s heartening there were so many out there who would try to find these two.”

Ames, from Rancho Santa Margarita, had previously hiked the trails with his daughters, ages 6 and 3. A database administrator with a bank, but knowing he had a full workweek, he went looking on his only opportunity—late Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m at least familiar with how the canyon runs, and thought I could try to do something,” Ames said.

He normally sticks to the trails with his children, but when Ames ventured off, he discovered just how dangerous the area is.

He found an old mine shaft about 20 feet up a steep incline and climbed to it. The entry was barred and the couple wasn’t there. Ames retreated and then became a casualty of the search.

“Unfortunately, I rolled my ankle pretty bad on the way down, and I was by myself and far from any other searchers, and I didn’t want to make this a search for three, so I limped back to the stream, crossed it, got on the road, and went back to my truck,” Ames said.

“You hear these stories. Something happens nearby, I thought there might be a small chance I could contribute something. I got out there, thought maybe it was a bad idea and it’s not going to happen, but I was just trying to do whatever I could.”

A lot of people were.

So, too, were the professionals. Nearly 20 agencies—with about 100 people per day—participated in the search, according to Orange County Sheriff Department spokesman Jason Park.

“We were utilizing everything we could to organize the resources we had there,” Park said. “We appreciated (the volunteers') motivation and willingness to come out and help, but we found that as more and more were coming out, there were a number of rescues that had to be done on volunteers. ...  The number of vehicles going into the canyon were preventing our vehicles from going in. It created a bit of a challenge that required us to close off Trabuco Creek Road (Thursday).”

Two volunteers needed rescuing by one of the helicopters searching for the teens, which Park said took away a significant amount of resources for about an hour.

“We certainly didn’t want anyone else to get lost,” Park said. “A lot of people were coming out and seemed to be very unprepared with the clothes and shoes they were wearing. Their heart was in the right place, but I’m not so sure it was a very good plan.”

There was no coordinated effort among the volunteers to get the most efficiency from them.

“Everyone had their own group,” McGirr said. “There were some people there on horseback, which was really impressive—they obviously knew what they were doing. There were people out there with cases of water, giving away bottles, doing whatever they could.

“I think after awhile, all the volunteers were probably more of a hazard. (OCSD was) proven right to a degree—they had to airlift people out.”

All told, five people had to be lifted out of the area during the week, including Cendoya and Jack, and a reserve deputy sheriff who suffered a head injury when he fell about 60 feet.

Seasoned hiker Mike Proctor of Rancho Santa Margarita arrived Wednesday morning not knowing what to expect. He spoke to a sheriff's deputy who said officials weren't looking for help but he could ask the parents. One of them—he didn't know who—said the families would take any help they could get.

Proctor eventually made his way up Yeager Trail because no one was there. Holy Jim was covered and he had run into a mountain biker who was going to search Horse Thief Trail. He also ran into a hiker named Steve who had hiked from the Blue Jay campground near Ortega Highway—easily more than 10 miles away—calling out the names of Cendoya and Jack the entire way.

Proctor marked every little campsite and side trail with a post-it note with his name and the date it had been searched. At one place, he found an Easter day receipt for junk food from a 99 Cent Store in Santa Ana. Thinking it might belong to the couple, it made him push even harder.

"I know what that area's like and I'm actually shocked they found them alive," Proctor said. "It's a nice present for those parents. I have an 18-year-old son, and if it was my son, I'd be freaking out and want anyone with any kind of ability to go out and help. It's something I'm good at. I don't know if the cops wanted me there, but I'm better than a high school kid.

"I saw high school kids there wearing Vans and carrying water bottles and I thought, 'That's a disaster waiting to happen.' There were kids driving like idiots, like they were on a public road. I had to hike in because some idiot wrecked their car."

No stranger to the canyon, McGirr said he learned a lesson from his experience.

“If you stay on the trails it’s absolutely gorgeous,” he said. “Walking off trail, you could fall to your death out there. I didn’t realize how dangerous it is off that trail. There are so many ravines. They’re not sinkholes, but the brush is pretty high and you could be walking along and walk off a cliff. I went off the trail, but I did it with trepidation.”

Not done with trepidation, though, was joining the search.

“People really did pull together on this,” Ames said. “Mostly there was a lot of support and love by people to do what they could to help friends, family and even strangers, and you don’t hear about that often enough in today’s world. And that’s why I went out there. I had a chance to help and I wanted to help.”

A chance to help a stranger.