Missing Person on Santa Rosa Reservation
August 17-31, 2024
Santa Rosa Reservation, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, and Anza, CA
2024-032
Written by: Richard Yocum
The callout for RMRU came mid-morning on Saturday 8/17/2024 while we were in the middle of serv-ing our annual pancake breakfast fundraiser in Idyllwild. Eleven RMRU members immediately re-sponded to the mission on that first day, which began on the Santa Rosa Reservation.
Our missing person was reported to have been in an altercation with another motorist at the Santa Rosa Pit Stop gas station on the evening of 8/15 and was observed on a security camera to be leaving the area on foot in a southerly direction. RMRU picked up tracking our missing person from where Sheriff’s resources had been able to track him the previous day. We were able to follow tracks several miles down an extremely rugged desert canyon. Many additional SAR resources were called in from other counties and other agencies. The canyon was accessible only by a significant hike or helicopter and not by any vehicular means of transportation. Most field teams had to be inserted and extracted by helicopter hoist cable. There was no cellular service and almost nonexistence radio communica-tions, so teams relied on an airborne radio relay and repeater for comms and their safety.
The weather was brutally hot and dry and a half dozen searchers over several days had to be emer-gently evacuated by helicopter hoist for heat exhaustion. Also, one searcher had a refrigerator-size boulder roll onto his foot and pin him in place until he could be rescued.
We spent multiple days trying to locate our missing person or where he might have exited the canyon, but without success. Helicopters and drones assisted the ground teams in the search. Much of the search area consisted of extremely dense vegetation, cacti, and huge boulder fields. It would have been easy for a person to take refuge under boulders or vegetation and be extremely difficult to find over the many acres of difficult terrain. There was no known water source in the canyon and after more than two weeks of searching, we were forced to suspend our active in-field searching in consid-eration of survivability, safety of SAR personnel, and the thoroughness of our searching of the area.
RMRU Members Involved: (Trygve Anderson, Coby Brown, Steve Bryant, Joe Erickson, Kalie Fletcher, Matt Frenken, Michael George, Donny Goetz, Kyleen Gonzalez, Andy Hayt, Glenn Henderson, Eric Holden, Jeff Leisner, Geoff Marshall, Benji Mata, Tobias Moyneur, Blake Rankin, Vinay Rao, Ryan Roleson, Michael Solares, Solan Watts, Ray Weden, and Richard Yocum)
Other Agencies Involved: (Riverside County Sheriff’s Office personnel, including Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team (SERT), Emergency Operations Division (EOD), Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and the Aviation Unit’s Rescue 9 and Star 9 helicopters; Desert Sheriff’s SAR, Riverside County Search Dogs, San Diego Mountain Rescue Team, San Diego Sheriff’s Office SAR Team, San Bernardino Cave & Tech-nical Rescue Team, San Bernardino Mountain SAR Team, San Gorgonio SAR Team, California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA), California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), Task Force Falcon, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, Santa Rosa Reservation, Civil Air Patrol, Cal Fire, Mercy Air, and AMR)