|
  |
Missing "shy" 8-year-old girl
By Bill
Blaschko
A frantic
mother told us that her frail, shy, 8-year-old
daughter was missing below the Fuller Mill Creek
picnic area. The Mojeske family was visiting the
area for the day and their two children were
having fun playing in the creek. Toni, the
daughter, gradually worked her way downstream
apparently without realizing what was happening.
Although her parents were unaware that their
child was drifting away, a number of other
visitors to the area remembered seeing the cute
child further and further downstream. Once Toni's
parents became aware that their daughter was lost
they instituted a hasty search. The sheriff was
called when Mr. Mojeske and his son were unable
to find Toni.
In short order
our team was called out, and assembled at the
road head by 8:30 PM. We were told by Mrs.
Mojeske that Toni was so shy that she would
probably not answer our calls. Also Toni had many
severe allergies and the mother felt it quite
possible that she may have succumbed to a
reaction to mosquito bites. We were unable to get
an accurate description of Toni's footprints, but
did learn she was wearing only a light shorts
outfit. With this information we sent our teams
into the field. Jim Fairchild and I were assigned
to follow the stream bed of the North Fork down
from the point the child was last seen while
other teams followed the highway and the ridges
to the sides. It was just getting dark as we set
out and I switched on my head lamp after only 10
minutes of hiking. The night air was warm, still
and thick with mosquitoes. At first the banks of
the stream were covered with footprints of every
description, but as huge boulders increasingly
blocked the way the prints thinned out. Jim and I
scrambled around and over the boulders mostly in
silence, occasionally calling out to Toni. Soon
the going got so rough that we doubted that our
subject could have gone that way. About this time
we heard Joe Erickson reporting over the radio of
a possible voice contact from his position on the
highway. Jim and I turned 90 degrees to the right
to help check out this possibility. To our
disappointment we soon realized that Toni was not
in this area and bushwhacked our way back to the
creek bed. I felt my hopes waning as Jim and I
worked our way through the patches of poison oak
and nettles looking for any evidence of Toni.
The creek
began to level out, making the going easier, when
we found our first good clue. In a sand bar in
the middle of the stream there was a single set
of fresh, small footprints. After excitedly
radioing in this information we proceeded
down-stream. What we found was a recurrent
pattern of footprints whenever a sand bar blocked
the main part of the creek. Toni was walking in
the water almost all the time and therefore
leaving no prints. The San Jacinto Truck Trail
crossed the North Fork River a couple miles
downstream of our location. A search team
including Mark Rhodes and Mel Krug was driven to
this point by members of the Pine Cove Fire
Department. Jim and I continued on while Mel and
Mark reported that they could find no evidence
that Toni had gotten that far. Jim and I had
lapsed into small talk when a little voice
interrupted our conversation. Toni was a little
ahead of us bedded down in a glade of ferns right
beside the creek. The time was 2:10 AM and the
first order of business was getting the shivering
child warm and fed.
While Toni sipped on some apple
juice I relayed the good news back to base. Toni
did not turn out to be quite the personality that
her mother described. A frail child could not
have traveled the two miles through rugged
terrain that Jim Fairchild felt was the
equivalent of 8 miles of regular hiking. Also
Toni was anything but shy. While Jim and I waited
for Mel and Mark to hike up from the truck trail,
Toni told us all about her adventure. She said
she had been splashing water up on rocks to leave
a trail for followers and that she had stopped
walking at dark. Toni also quizzed us in depth on
how we had been sent to look for her.
When Mel and
Mark reached us Jim emptied his pack and Toni
jumped in. The rest of us divided up Jim's gear
and we hiked down to where Bob and Marge Muir of
the Pine Cove Fire Department were waiting to
drive us out. During this hike Toni continued to
be a "walkie talkie" as she told us all
about her family life, friends and recycling cans
with her brother. On return to base camp all
appeared to be back to normal as Toni snuggled in
her mothers arms. My thoughts turned toward a
warm breakfast until I learned that the team of
Cameron Robbins and Rob Gardner had not yet
returned. The radio that this team was carrying
had not been functioning and Cam and Rob didn't
know the search was over. Rob realized that the
radio wasn't operating and was able to effect
some ingenious field repair work to reestablish
communication. At 7 AM after a marathon hike Rob
and Cameron reached the highway and the team
headed off for breakfast. Rob wished that his
walkie talkie had worked as well as the
"walkie talkie" we rescued.
|
  |