Missing Hiker Near Onyx Summit
April 9 and 10, 2026
Onyx Summit, San Bernardino National Forest
2026-14
Written by: Richard Yocum
On April 8, 2026 a 58-year-old woman with suspected early dementia was on a short walk at a remote location in the San Bernardino National Forest near Juniper Springs campground with her husband when they became separated at about 12:30 pm and he could not find her. San Bernardino County search and rescue (SAR) teams were activated and searched for her well into the night without finding her. Because of the urgency created by a major late winter storm predicted to arrive in 3 days and the challenges that would present at the 7,730-foot elevation, mutual aid from other counties was requested for the next day.
I had just arrived at the Palm Springs Tramway upper station on April 9 to begin a meeting with the Riverside County Emergency Management Department (EMD) when the RMRU callout came in at 9:57 am. After collecting information about the callout, I boarded the next tram down the mountain and made the 2-hour drive to the incident command post (ICP).
Dave Kosmal, Dave Bever, and I from RMRU were assigned to one field team to search a 90-acre segment including a drainage descending from the last known point (LKP), where the couple became separated. We returned to the ICP at dusk, having found nothing of significance. Blake Rankin arrived later and searched on a different field team. Other SAR teams searching during that Operational Period 2 (OP2), making up a total of 13 field teams, were West Valley SAR (WVSAR), Bear Valley SAR (BVSAR), Bear Valley Posse (BVP), Rim of the World Search and Rescue (RimSAR), BSSAR, San Gorgonio SAR (SGSAR), San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Cave and Technical Rescue Team (Cave), San Diego Mountain Rescue Team (SDMRT), and San Diego Sheriff’s Office SAR (SDSOSAR). A trailing canine showed interest along trails to about ½ mile east of the LKP. SB Sheriff’s deputies searched outlying road and trails using off-highway vehicles. A search by a Fire Integrated Real Time Intelligence Systems (FIRIS) aircraft was negative except for a heat signature that was confirmed by a ground team to be a deer. Both Daves left for home and I remained at the ICP to monitor two members from San Diego Mountain Rescue Team (SDMRT) for whom I was responsible until they returned to the ICP at midnight. I then stayed the night at the ICP.
Mutual aid assistance had also been requested through the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) from the Forensic Analysis of Location from Cellular, Online, and Networks (FALCON) group, and I took the lead for integrating their analyses into the search strategy. The missing subject’s cell phone was tracked approaching where they parked their car, was in the vicinity of the LKP at the time they got separated, then tracked moving east, and then south until it reversed direction to head north after about 2 hours. At 3 pm the phone switched to a different cell tower and remained connected to that tower for the next two hours. We used a Radio Frequency (RF) map to focus our search on the specific terrain areas where the phone could have been connected to that cell tower.
The mutual aid response for the 7 am briefing on April 10 for Operational Period 3 (OP3) was large, and included teams from WVSAR, RimSAR, San Bernardino Mountain SAR (SBMtnSAR), SGSAR, Cave, BVSAR, BVP, SDMRT, SDSOSAR, and RMRU (Blake Rankin, Vinay Rao, Solan Watts, Jeff Leisner, and Richard Yocum). I was assigned as part of the Incident Management Team (IMT) at the ICP. Field teams were deployed to search many areas farther out than the OP2 efforts. After just a couple hours, we heard radio traffic that two different field teams both had visual on a person lying in a drainage 1 mile east of the LKP. They converged to find our missing subject lying on a contorted position, completely disoriented, and complaining of back pain and having fallen multiple times. She was assessed with stable vital signs but unable to walk. She was hoisted by helicopter and flown to a hospital for further medical evaluation. We were elated to have found her alive, before the approaching storm.
RMRU Members Involved: (Dave Bever, Dave Kosmal, Jeff Leisner, Blake Rankin, Vinay Rao, Solan Watts, Richard Yocum)
Other Agencies Involved: (WVSAR, BVSAR, BVP, RimSAR, BSSAR, SGSAR, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Cave and Technical Rescue Team, SBMtnSAR, SDMRT, SDSOSAR, FIRIS, FALCON, and many law enforcement personnel, including those San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Diego County)