It was about 6:55 a.m. Saturday when a text message appeared on the cell phone of Jan Foltz, a retired schoolteacher, Battle Ground resident and field-qualified volunteer member of Silver Star Search & Rescue.
“Call out search for missing 7-year-old in Oregon. Special request through CRESA. Call ASAP.”
Silver Star’s coordinator, Rick Blevins of Vancouver, had received the request from 911 dispatchers with Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, who’d been called by officials in Portland.
Kyron Horman had been last seen in Skyline School in Portland on Friday morning. A large-scale search started after that, and the first wave of searchers had worked for hours.
Blevins texted Silver Star’s 23 or so members to see who was available.
And about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, after standing in line with other search groups, a half-dozen trained Silver Star members checked in with search coordinators outside Kyron’s school.
“The reason they called us, they said, was they had already started wearing out their resources,” Foltz said later.
Wearing rock-climbing helmets and carrying packs with warm blankets and emergency medical gear in case they found the boy, the Clark County searchers methodically searched in waist- and chest-high grasses. They covered search lanes marked with string. They marked where they had looked with tape and collected GPS waypoints.
“They can see exactly where we searched,” Foltz said. “It’s beginning to be a very high-tech thing. If you don’t find them, you go back and retrace. It has been combed so thoroughly.”
When they came to thick blackberry brambles, some of the men used brute strength and machetes to hack paths, but Foltz used a pair of garden snippers.
“I just clip the big branches and push through the smaller ones,” she said.
It was hot, sweaty work for Foltz, 62, because she’d decided to wear a heavy raincoat to protect her from the blackberry thorns.
And when they finished their searching and checked out, about 6 p.m. Saturday, Foltz’s $50 raincoat was likely ruined by the barbs. But her arms weren’t pricked, scratched and lacerated like those of the other searchers.
The Silver Star searchers, along with several from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office Civilian Search & Rescue Team, had started their work very early Saturday. They had worked hard for several hours, and found no sign of Kyron.
And their work was only beginning. Though tired, the Silver Star searchers went to their 7 p.m. business meeting.
And about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, they were called out again.
A father and his two daughters, 9 and 10, had gone missing while rafting on the East Fork of the Lewis River.
The Silver Star and Clark County searchers headed for that scene. The family was rescued about 12:30 a.m. Sunday.
“We didn’t get home until about 2:30 in the morning,” Foltz said. “We were just totally fried.”
Silver Star is looking for unpaid volunteers, who, if accepted, will undergo a state-certified regimen of physical fitness work and required education in topics including emergency medical care; map, compass and GPS training; radio work; being safe around helicopters and searching crime scenes.
