Trackers followed Kim's footprints through dense forest and over slippery boulders from one side of the creek to the other. Kim was almost certainly dripping wet. It's not known whether he realized he was approaching the Rogue River, but authorities said he wouldn't have found civilization even had he made it to where the creek empties out.
A helicopter crew spotted Kim's body in the creek at a place where the terrain becomes impassable on both sides because two sheer cliffs line the water. Had Kim known to continue down the logging road from where the car stopped, he soon would have come to a fishing and rafting resort known as Black Bar Lodge.
It was vacant for the winter, but rescuers checked it several times, Winters said. He comes from the city without a lot of outdoors experience, and he was thinking on his feet, he was very meticulous. He had a strong will to survive. Kim's body was taken to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab , where a medical examiner will determine the cause and time of death. Autopsy results could be released as soon as today.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities said Kim had been leaving clothing and bits of maps in the canyon, apparently as a trail for searchers to track. The discovery marked the end of a saga that was closely watched in San Francisco, where Kim worked as an editor at the tech news site Cnet, and around the nation.
Kim left his wife and two daughters early Saturday to look for help a week after the family became stranded off Bear Camp Road in the mountains between Grants Pass and Gold Beach. Kati Kim, 30, and daughters Penelope, 4, and 7-month-old Sabine remained with their car, 15 miles from Bear Camp Road, and were spotted and rescued Monday. Searcher: Father's final effort 'heroic' Area pilot's knowledge aided rescue of mother, two young children Mail Tribune by Anita Burke December 7, Jackson County searchers mourned the San Francisco man they had spent days seeking in an intensive, multi-agency search in the mountains west of Grants Pass, calling James Kim a hero for his efforts to get help for his family.
Jones was back in his office Wednesday and didn't participate in recovery efforts. Kim, his wife, Kati, and their two daughters, Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, got stranded on a remote road off winding Bear Camp Road Nov. They had spent Thanksgiving in Seattle, visited friends in Portland and planned to spend the night in Gold Beach on their way home to San Francisco. Friends and co-workers reported them missing last week and a widespread search in Southern Oregon started Friday.
John Rachor, a Central Point pilot with 30 years' experience, saw a Mail Tribune story about the missing family and decided he had to go look for them. I thought about those kids and I would have looked all winter for them. Monday afternoon, he spotted Kati Kim running up and down the road near the family's silver Saab station wagon and waving an umbrella to attract his attention.
An SOS message had been stomped into snow nearby. Rachor radioed the command center and a larger Carson helicopter hired by the Kim family went in to get Kati and the girls. Both Jones and Rachor helped track James Kim's footprints through the snow. He had left his wife and children at the car Saturday to seek help. Jones said Kim apparently walked along the road for four or five miles. Then, his tracks crossed paths with a big black bear headed downhill across the road.
Jones speculated that Kim headed down the steep ravine to avoid the animal, which appears to have followed him. Kim hiked several more miles in the Big Windy Creek drainage. Searchers working their way down the drainage Tuesday discovered a spare pair of pants that Kim had left in what they hoped was a sign for them. From the air, teams spotted a collection of clothing and Jones helped coordinate lowering a Jackson County SWAT team deputy feet down a rope to collect them.
With darkness approaching, the deputy had to return to the helicopter, Jones said. We were so close to getting him, just hours or short days. That's what we work for. It is a passion. But it also filled a deep need in him. Once a troubled kid who found people to reach out and encourage him, he wanted to stretch out a helping hand to others in need, he explained. And nowhere was need more immediate and apparent than the calls for help that search and rescue teams hear each year from lost hunters, elderly couples stranded by rising floodwaters or kids swept down raging rivers.
Jackson County didn't have its own aerial search capabilities before Jones joined the team four years ago, but he thought he had the skills and resources to add that tool. Now he's encouraging Rachor, who has searched on a freelance basis, to join the team, too. Father of James Kim expresses his concerns about the Oregon search. Kim Saturday, January 6, Early last month my son, James Kim, died of hypothermia in a snowy wilderness in Oregon after setting out on foot to seek help for his family, who were stranded in a car.
My son's death was a tragedy that could have been prevented. A wrong turn on a poorly marked wilderness road need not have resulted in the ordeal of James's wife and two daughters, nor his death while trying desperately to find help. I am sharing some of the hard-learned lessons that I took away from my family's trauma in the hope of making it less likely that others will suffer the same fate.
First, it is crucial that measures be adopted to ensure against mistaken access to potentially hazardous logging and private roads. Those responsible for the maintenance of such roads must be required to post clear signs warning against access. Governments should allocate sufficient resources to regularly monitor roadblocks designed to prevent access, and it should be a federal crime to tamper with such signs and barriers. Such measures might not have stopped James and his family from being misled by a map that depicted the road they chose through the Coast Range as a major thoroughfare, but they would have prevented the ill-fated turn that led them into a maze of logging roads and across treacherous terrain that travelers never should have had access to in the first place.
Locals say mistaken access to the road in question is common, although a gate is at the entrance to the logging roads specifically to prevent unsuspecting travelers from wandering onto them.
The appropriate federal agencies failed to perform their duty and lock the gate for the winter. James was not the first victim of an accidental detour in the same area, but with a few changes, he could be the last. Second, Congress should change the law so that most recent credit card and phone-use records can be immediately released to the next of kin in the event of an emergency. Privacy laws are important to safeguard personal information, but there needs to be provision for exceptional access to information by relatives when it is critical to a family member's survival.
Four days passed before we even knew James and his family were missing. But because my family was unable to confirm credit card and phone-use information until days after their absence was discovered, the start of the search was needlessly delayed. Precious time and a precious life were lost. Privacy concerns kept both the hotel where James and his family last stayed and the restaurant where they last dined from sharing credit card records, thus denying us for days important clues that would have helped narrow the initial search area.
Similarly frustrating was that we did not know about a transmission into James's cellphone on the night his family became stranded until the evening of Dec. Remarkably, this information was confirmed not by authorities but by conscience-driven cellphone company engineers who saw fit to volunteer their time.
This information proved critical to significantly reducing the search area, and it allowed for the discovery and safe rescue of James's wife, Kati, and my granddaughters, Penelope and Sabine, less than two days later. Had this information been confirmed sooner, rescue teams could have immediately focused the search operation, and James probably would have been rescued with his family and spared his doomed mile quest to save them.
What a difference a day would have made! Third, steps should be taken to ensure that authorities are adequately trained for search-and-rescue operations, have a clear sense of their available resources and fully understand the procedures necessary to conduct an effective, well-coordinated search-and-rescue operation.
We are eternally grateful for the heroic efforts of the search-and-rescue teams and volunteers who risked their lives to save James and his family. But the search was plagued by confusion, communication breakdowns and failures of leadership until the Oregon State Police set up a command post. The media widely reported that leads that could have led to more timely discovery of the car were not pursued.
Misinformation was rampant, diverting scarce resources. Air National Guard helicopters with sensitive heat-detecting technology languished on the tarmac for days, even after the cellphone-use information provided a better picture of where James and his family probably were.
Meanwhile, James hiked through the forest for two long, cold days and nights, and Kati and her children waited through two more days of freezing temperatures until private helicopters discovered and rescued them. Finally, the Federal Aviation Administration classification code for Temporary Flight Restrictions TFR to limit media presence during a life-or-death search-and-rescue operation should be more strictly enforced. At its highest, the road's elevation is between 4, and 4, feet.
It is not maintained and it doesn't get plowed, according to Sarah Rubrecht, a search-and-rescue coordinator. Believing they would hit the coast soon, Kati Kim fell asleep.
An hour later, she said, she woke up to a worrisome sight. We've been driving for a really long time already. Did we miss a turn? However, amid the snow, James Kim had missed a turn: At a fork in the road, he failed to see a sign for Gold Beach and chose to head right. He chose wrong. Believing he was on the road to the coast, he had, in fact, turned on to a logging track. And for reasons that may remain forever unknown, a steel gate that should have been locked, blocking this path, was left open.
Utterly lost, the Kims tried using their cell phones to call for help, but they found they had no service. James Kim decided to put the car in reverse easing his way to a lower elevation where there might be more of a signal. It was terrifying. Eventually, they stopped the car at a fork in the road where, she said, "at least we were on solid ground. With their gas gauge and the snow falling, the Kims decide the safest thing to do was wait for daylight.
They survived the bitter night by idling their engine to keep warm. The next day, they ate food that they had brought with them, as they studied their maps and waited for help. The family spent their second night huddled together in the back of their Saab, where James Kim had folded the seats down to make room.
They listened to the radio, which brought foreboding news: Storms were passing through the area. The Kims also had another worry: black bears. We were repeatedly honking the horn, honking the horn all night We were scared to death!
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