Crime & Safety
Search Team Volunteers Are Airlifted After Getting Lost During Search
In a sign of how difficult the terrain is, two volunteers helping to find a pair of lost teenage hikers were themselves lost and are being airlifted to safety today.
Rescue workers looking for two hikers lost since Easter Sunday were busy today, but it was coming to the aid of two volunteer searchers and tracking two other lost hikers.
About 4:30 p.m., two volunteers who joined the search for the missing teens called 911 saying they were lost and helicopters were called to airlift them out, said Orange County sheriff's Lt. Jason Park.
Rescue workers also responded to another call of two hikers injured near Holy Jim Falls, Park said. They were not part of the search for missing hikers Nicholas Cendoya, 19, and Kyndall Jack, 18, of Costa Mesa, Park added.
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About 40 official rescue workers searched for Cendoya and Jack today, Park said. Many other volunteers joined that search, he added.
Park said deputies checked out a couple of reports of "flickers" of light being seen in the search area before dawn this morning, but the hikers were not found.
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Another sign of hope came when two volunteers said they were calling out the names of the missing teens and heard someone holler "Help" in reply, but that lead did not pan out, Park said.
"We had a team right there in the area," and they did not find anything, Park said.
The searchers were getting ready to withdraw at sunset, and a helicopter will continue to fly over the area looking for the missing teens overnight, Park said.
The families of the missing teens had their vehicle towed out of Holy Jim Canyon shortly after midnight, a news photographer reported from the scene.
Cendoya and Jack called authorities about 8:25 p.m. Sunday to say they were lost, said Gail Krause of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The two said they believed they were about a mile from their vehicle, Krause said. Soon after they contacted authorities, the cellphone's battery wore down, she said.
Krause said an active ground search resumed about 7 a.m. Monday.
Sheriff's Lt. Erin Giudice said authorities could not get an accurate GPS "ping" from the phone to pinpoint the hikers' location. However, a bloodhound picked up a scent on Monday night, and rescuers, including on horseback, searched the area.
- City News Service
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