Lost 13 Year Old Boy

July 16, 2012
Elsinore Mountains
2012-028

Written by Glenn Henderson

Yikes!!! The phones ringing and its 1:30 in the morning! Not a good thing. Our call captain, Gwenda Yates, is calling and asking if I'm ready to do a helicopter hoist rescue in Elsinore? I want to say "no" but I grab my pack and am out the door by 1:50, headed for the Sheriff's aviation hanger at Ryan Field in Hemet. A 13 year old boy (Paul) has taken a short cut home through a brushy canyon in Elsinore. Sheriff's helicopter Star 9 has found him but needs someone to be hoisted down to him and haul him back up to the helicopter.

When I get to the hanger, no one is there but fog is rolling in. Not a good sign. Dispatch called me that star 9 will be there to get me in 15 minutes. Sure enough, they fly over but I cannot see them. They fly over 2 more times but the fog is too thick and they cannot land. We will now need to do the mission by foot. We get the Lat.-Long numbers from Star-9 were they last saw the subject. By now Alan Lovegreen had arrived so he put the Lat.-long numbers in his GPS and we leave for Elsinore. Alan went directly to Elsinore and I went to our station and picked one of our team vehicles and drove to Elsinore.

We meet the deputy at the top of a ridge in Elsinore where he described having voice contact with our 13 year old. Alan and I took off following our GPS to him. We had been gone an hour or so when Alan realized that the going was too steep and brushy for him to be able to get back home by 7AM. We turned around and I met up with Rob and Roger May. We turned around and started back down the mountainside. We gave a shout and got a reply of "Help" Good, we were going in the right direction. It was extremely steep and we had to break down the brush that was 7 or 8 feet tall to get down the slope. It was amazing that Paul was able to get down as far as he did. We finally got to where our GPS led us but no Paul. We found where he had cleared out a spot and spent the night but he was gone. We continued on down the slope and ended up in the city of Elsinore. The Sheriff picked us up and drove us back to basecamp. We now had other team members on the way and were putting assignments together when we got the word that our subject had walked out and was at a market in Elsinore. That was great news as it was going to be a pretty hot day. We packed up our gear and headed home.

RMRU team members present: Joe Erickson, Glenn Henderson, Lew Kingman, Alan Lovegreen, Rob May, Roger May, and Gwenda Yates.