The most paranoid among us believe that every person is shadowed by satellitesand thats probably not so far-fetched. The dog handler (Cheryl) claimed Raven found a water bottle and a hat with mountain lion bites in them. To my understanding, both the Truth group is no longer accepting new members. I'm happy to PM you with my FB name so you can invite me. Prospectors found gold and silver in the area in the late 1800s, and the Sunrise Mine popped up around Wirtz Basin. Search-and-rescue teams, assisted by dog teams and drones, searchedthe area for three weeks before suspending operations. And for how long? His father, Carlton Carr Sr. was an entrepreneur, jumping from hustle to hustle, but by far his most successful, and formative enterprise, was a gold mine in Colorado. Kevin, who used to wear jeans day hiking with Sam, learned how to use an ice ax. Dares was grateful that Carr was searching. But hey, this family has closure, he continues, his defenses returning. Though Snohomish County had officially suspended its operation, Sergeant Adams came back up to snorkel Lake Elan in a thick dry suit. Editor's Note: This article was updated April 30 to correct cellular satellites to cellular sites. One night in July 1997, Carr and six other guys dressed in all black smashed their way into the store and stole between 80 and 100 guns. At some point, she realized things were bad and turned around. A man that dresses in military camo but, being a felon, cant legally own a gun. The storm hit. The two ended up searching together. Early on he told deputy Peter Teske, who would also play a huge role in the search, he had a feeling we better throw everything weve got at this one, at least for a couple of days.. Flyers wrapped trees and signposts on the Mountain Loop and telephone poles in Seattle. At least, he says, the man was looking. Next to a log and up against a rock is an orange Therm-a-Rest folded as if used as a cushion to sit on. Toppled trees covered in moss. It felt true; he and Sam had lived together for more than a year, had talked about marriage. Hes proud of his German heritage, he said, although he believes the Nazis are disgusting. A background check revealed the burglary charges in Missouri, a warrant for arrest, stemming from that burglary charge, a failure to pay child support allegation and a marijuana possession charge. What color is Lakoduks pad, backpack and sleeping bag, he asks, his voice tight with urgency. I say it again: in my opinion what the boyfriend of Samantha Sayers, Kevin Dares, did the night she went missing, going into that trail alone, the way he contacted Rangers and 911 that night, his delay to inform Samantha's mother that her daughter was missing - she learned about her disappearance next day approx. The color of her lipstick debated, what does it mean? We are just clearing ground, he said. :-) grinchmas34 4 yr. ago I would love to be added to that group! The title change was born out of a family discussion, he says. We can get statistics on auto accidents but theyre not collected for people missing in the wilderness., The search for Jon lasted only two days before the county sheriff pulled out and, as David remembers, told him he should give his son up to the mountain. He points to the moats off the north side of the peak, where the steep bottom of the cliff meets the glacier. That person wouldve walked out by now, I would think.. I dont ever go out and think Oh Im going to find Rachel. Today is a day where we clear ground where they are not.. Left, the private search basecamp near Lake Elan; right, Kevin Dares, Bud Carr, and Clay Olsen. Been trying for a week now I thought it was shut down (I'm social media challenged) 3 He remembers Sams mother Lisa asking him what he really thought, around day four. In every community across Washington, families are facing the challenge of accessing and affording long-term care. No way, he said in a comment, because women need more protection than men do. In his book The Cold Vanish he acknowledges that its a rounded guesstimation although he believes 1,600 is wildly conservative.. The hiker turns his camera in a blurry panorama, catching blue sky over boulder fields, the sharp peaks that circle Lake Elan. For $1,700. Allison Williams Language is powerful.. See Photos. Jamie Lakoduk is a big redheaded man who looks like he could rip you in half but has the demeanor of a teddy bear. Unfortunately it seems fairly straight forward that she either fell or took the wrong route down - I am not familar with the area but the above article mentions someone thought they saw her descending down the south side which actually just leads into more wilderness, although this was a hike/scramble she had done before. Over the course of the next days the Skagit County Search and Rescue team will gather up Lakoduks remains and her things. Learning to, if not love, at least tolerate the mountains. The wrong side of the mountain, he later told a sheriffs office sergeant. Kevin, status report, Carr says into the radio, which each searcher carries per his rigorous protocol. Psychics sent tips to the police Sam is near rocks, trees and water someone reported seeing her in a Walmart in Spokane acting strangely. Im looking for vent stacks. Kevin took it in stride, told the stranger who he was, but held no hard feelings. See Photos. He liked camping. But since moving to Seattle in 2012, and spending months of his life living on Vesper Peak, hes accustomed himself to the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. At a Unicorn bar drag brunch in 2017, Turner remembers Sams cheers at the flamboyant performance, the loudest person there, giving the biggest tips. His girlfriend, Samantha Sayers, also disappeared while hiking. A carpenter by trade, who converted to Buddhism while in a Missouri prison, Carr spends months in the woods looking for missing people as a way of repaying his karmic debt to society. The meeting never happened. His sarcastic southern faade slips. They called it Operation Relentless Pursuit. Soon hes ahead of everyone else. Now that I've heard more theories on that front, his story sounds weirder and weirder. Copyright 2023, The Spokesman-Review | Community Guidelines | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy, Three years, and thousands of hours and dollars later, she remains missing, National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, already overtaxed system dependent on an aging volunteer base, Bill Gillespie, president of the Washington State Search and Rescue Volunteer Advisory Council told a reporter in early August, county and state agencies spent 22 days searching for her, the founder of the Jon Francis Foundation, The Hidden Lake trek is 8 miles round trip and steep, publishing three short books on the topic, he posted a photo of a note hed placed on the car, told a reporter that hed never seen anything like it, Carr posted a 30-minute live YouTube video during which someone called him ridiculous., whose husband Tom disappeared and died hiking alone this year and was later found by a friend, a Seattle real estate broker and woman of color, of a bearded man with a Pinocchio-length nose, wearing a do-rag and smoking a cigarette, Heightened interest in Moscow killings by true crime consumers could be harmful, Man who exchanged gunfire with Spokane police downtown in October faces federal drug charge , Man accused of killing four UI students agrees to be extradited to Idaho in Pennsylvania hearing , Hayden man arrested after firing weapon in apartment building , 'There's not much doubt': Families of UI students react to suspect's initial court appearance and new details released, Investigators believe DNA of accused killer found on sheath at home where 4 UI students were slain, 'She was living the life that she deserved': Maddie Mogen's father braces for first Christmas without her, 'People could be charged': Social media rumors about Moscow case leading to doxxing, harassment. Kevin shut down the Facebook group and others sprung up in its wake. And everything tilted at an absurd angle 35 to 40 degrees making progress a thing measured in hundreds of feet, not miles. I have been following this case since the beginning. Anyone with any information should call the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office at 425-388-3808 or 425-388-3523.. Kevin was expecting a call from Sam, his live-in girlfriend, by 6pm. Baker - Snoqualmie National Forest. He knows he should be angling left, to meet up with the group, but for some reason he wants to trend right a bit more. It was easy for fellow hikers to remember the young woman with the bald, tattooed head. Charismatic in the most genuine way. Sam was a proud LGBTQ ally, thriving on activism. Thank you! The official search for Sam went on for 22 days. Yet, when after 10 days, the Skagit County Sheriffs Office suspended the search for Rachel Lakoduk, the only person who kept searching, and never stopped, was Carr. Dont touch anything, he says. They werent worried about getting caught, focusing instead on the imminent collapse of society. Carr Sr. bought the mine for a song in the early 80s and turned it into a profitable business within a decade. One day in Wirtz Basin, Kevin fell in step with a man who didnt recognize this stranger with the Cajun accent and decided to share some theories. Two trekking poles. He watches crime shows, so he tells me, Theres always a dungeon where they lock them up. Alopecia, an autoimmune disease, caused Sam to lose much of her hair; she shaved the rest daily. After the discovery they changed strategies and started following the terrain downhill from the fire. So, Dares understands why county search and rescue crews suspend searches; they have other tragedies to attend to. Vieira said Sayers wore a wig in high school, but one . I want to understand that she had to "put up a front" in order to properly follow other leads, but like how dare you rally and petition and raise money for volunteers to go searching if you never really felt she was there in the first place. That was day 106. Hes prone to long rants, but is also a good listener, happy to suspend a story, although he almost always picks it up later. An estimated 1,600 people are missing in the wildlands of the United States. Get breaking news delivered to your inbox as it happens. But when they knocked on the door to Kevin and Sams apartment, the truth quickly shattered the fantasy. Carr is uncharacteristically quiet. Samantha Sayers, 28, has been missing from a solo hike on Vesper Peak, Wash., since Aug. 1, 2018. This was on the last day of the search before they stopped for the season. Less than a month later, on a sunny December day, Kevin sits at a window table back at Roccos and reflects on his strange, lost autumn of 2018. One witness claimed she saw Sam playing a TV show on her phone while hiking that day, an episode of The Bachelorette. Kevin swiftly moved into the next stretch, where hikers emerge into Wirtz Basin, a box canyon with a smattering of squat trees. Another saw her descending the south side of summit. People made YouTube videos. Polite. I guess the most pressing thing for me now tho is what everyone is saying since LYS has changed her tone and wtf happened to KD. Interactive Map in Progress as of August 31, 2018. Rachel Lakoduk woke early on Oct. 17, 2019, stuffed her purple sleeping bag into her green backpack, dumped her clean laundry on her bed, picked out the clothes she needed for the upcoming adventure, jumped into her white Jeep Cherokee and was westbound out of Moses Lake shortly after 7 a.m. She passed through Washingtons hot and dry middle, registered for her hike at a ranger station and then parked at the Hidden Lake Lookout trailhead. Sayers was healthy but bald because of alopecia, an autoimmune disease that leads to hair loss, her mother, Lisa Yax Sayers, said on Facebook in 2018. Carr knew what so many recreationists did not, that Vesper Peak wasnt just a subalpine playland of rocks and cliffs. I'm especially interested in the account of the witness who saw Sam Sayers heading west. Hi, I'm not on Facebook, but interested in this case (I posted some thoughts about the public records recently on another Reddit thread). In a crowded restaurant you must lean in to hear him speak. I do know that the season finale of that show happened after the hike so it could point to her not planning on inflicting any sort of self-harm? the witness wrote in an email to deputies. Hes proud of what the volunteers do. He called 911 early in the morning of Aug. 2. Were looking for a green backpack and a purple sleeping bag, a member of the search party says without consulting notes, the details vivid after two years of futility. Ellinor hike in the Olympics about a month before she went missing. PM me and Ill add yall. SM is an admin but does not act like the other admins.Basically what I saw was half of the people think SS fell from the mountain and the other half think she was killed off the mountain. At the request of Kriegers son, he stayed on the mountain for a month and half. I just do not know what to think, but I am guessing she fell, and the area that required technical climbers was not searched properly? Samantha "Sam" Sayers, a former Girard resident, remains among the 43% still missing. But something catches his eye to the right, in a depression beneath a tree, a flash of orange out of place in the rain-fed greenery. I do think, though, that there might be some 'splainin' to do regarding the distribution of the GoFundMe cash. With his dark pointed goatee and survivalist rhetoric, Carr rubbed many the wrong way. That can lead to profiteering and exploitation, with some bad operators capitalizing on grief to make a buck. Its Aug. 14. The sheriffs office fielded sightings of bald women across the state, several at various Walmarts. Lean as a whip. But Dares and Carr kept going. By early March, just after Mardi Gras 2019 and three years after he met Sam, Kevin has regained some of the weight he shed on Vesper, a mustard button-up brings color back to his face. Now, his body is covered in ink, including a swastika, although its oriented in the traditional Buddhist way, not the Hitler way, he said. Approvals quickly followed. The day was hot, the faint haze from far-off wildfires hanging in the air. The tattoos on her scalp, Kevin says, were armor. In the Belltown apartment, they hung maps and scrawled Sharpie notes directly on the wall. Point of Disappearance. Online, critics pulled up evidence of past felonieshe helped burgle a gun store before Y2K, he admits, but found Buddhism in his four years in Missouri prison. In response, he launched an Instagram campaign, posting photo after photo of swastikas, oriented in the traditional Buddhist way. Reasonable. Sayers' family has started a GoFundMe campaignto purchase food and survival gear that rescuers have been dropping in 20 one-pound bags in various locations so Sayers might stumble across them. After summiting Washington state's Vesper Peak on a day hike in August 2018, Sam Sayers disappeared. Despite her healthy pallor, strangers assumed shed just undergone chemotherapy, and the sympathetic clucks wore on her. The Cascades retain pockets of remote wilderness, enclaves that feel as raw as when Western civilization first mowed a passage to the Pacific, yet are a casual drive from Seattle. That was what had pinged. To Kevin, Carr was a generous stranger turned close friend, willing to take the Louisiana tenderfoot through the rugged terrain around Vesper Peak. Its a sad, broken system in the United States. In this wide swath of mountains unpenetrated by cell phone coverage, the Verlot pay phone is literally a lifesaver; more than 25 calls to 911 were made between 2015 and 2017 alone. In Snohomish, calls often come for underprepared or overdue teens; once SAR launches a response on the Mountain Loop Highway, he usually gets a call from sheepish parents saying the missing had just returned home. LYS suddenly dismissing her vehement faith that SS was/is on the mountain. Sam was raised in the Erie, Pennsylvania area where her parents Ron and Lisa still live. Through all this drama, Carr, Dares and others continued searching. Folks questioned where all the money went. She was expected to return that evening and check in with family, the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office reported. The note warned the woman, whom Carr passed while searching for Rachel Lakoduk, about hiking alone. Sayers' family and friends vow to keep searching for her until she is found. I'm not a member either but I'm just curious what was the final straw for you with Lisa? Off the mountain, Kevin had become the tragic fiance who refused to give upor maybe the subject of wild speculation. By 4 p.m. Oct. 17, Lakoduk had made it about 2.5 miles up the trail and was at 5,500 feet. Around 10 a.m., Sayers signed her name in the logbook at the trailhead and then disappeared. Dares insisted on paying Carr $500 a week during the heat of the Sayers search. For her 28th birthday in 2019, they planned to hike to the Hidden Lake Lookout. Despite those challenges, when Samantha Sayers went missing in 2018, county and state agencies spent 22 days searching for her. This week I've caught up on the NW Hikers page dedicated to her, the forum was unfortunately closed back in September, but many of those people brought up valid points. 509 Olive Way, Suite 305, Seattle, WA 98101 Phone: 206-957-2234 Fax: 206-447-3388, By Samantha Sayers. She preferred if more people thought she was punk than had cancer.Sam exuded vitality. You know. I was a member of that group, but found them to be really gossipy, and petty. All issues Carr talked about, sometimes without prompting. Its been an uphill battle. While talking, he continues searching, scanning to his left and right. After Collegiate, Sayers attended the State University of New York at Fredonia, where she graduated in 2013 with a bachelors degree in technical theatre and theatre design and technology, according to herLinkedInaccount. Sams phone pinged, a sign it was on and working. She planned to meet a friend in Bellingham the next day. A paramount code in the search and rescue world, he said, is to not squawk about victories or defeats. Carrs ceaseless self-promotion. The couple descended. The happiest situation I can think of is shes on that mountain and it was something quick and she didnt suffer for too long., Only a fraction of missing persons cases are truly without a trace, truly unsolved. Now shes gone. When Kevin returned from the search, real life was waiting. Would a glove or a boot bring closure to a family? Someone else commented on his swastika tattoo, calling him a Nazi and racist. I went to high school with Sam, and her mom was always that uber-intense type. He took off up the trail toward Vesper, leading Cheryl Phillips, a dog handler from South Carolina, and her search dog Raven. For more information, please see our There are the obvious theories including wild animal attacks, getting lost or falling. She happily bought them and said in an interview that he had integrity. Im sure theyll be surprised [sic] twist weve never thought of., Its the murder mystery crowd, the I-love-watching-HBO-serial-killer-documentaries crowd, says Kevin, who tries, sometimes in vain, to temper his cynicism. Theyd had nothing since midafternoon on August 1, when Sams phone pinged near the summit, one of the only areas with even spotty cell service. But even he doesnt think Carr is a grief profiteer or a charlatan. Imagining Sam bushwhacking her way through the forest around Vesper, family members filled Ziploc bags with snacks and instructions for Sam. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Granite Falls, Washington. A crew of spacey garnet hunters who called themselves the Galactic Goats set up camp nearby, sometimes wandering into the search enclave in a haze of pot smoke to show off the rust-red gemstones theyd unearthed. So thats cool. Just one of those feelings. The tether didnt lead back to Sam at all. As a child, strangers in the store would comment on how beautiful her red hair was, to which she would only growl. August 1 had long since rolled into August 2, the first day of the search for Sam Sayers. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. He searched with the blessings of her son, despite the county sheriffs office asking him not to. My diets bad. According to the sheriff's office, a group of hikers reported seeing her on her way up Vesper Peak around midmorning. One saw her eating a sandwich. Dares is barely holding it together. Everyones gonna say, a boyfriend, whatever, fly-by-night, who cares, he says. Snow fell and Carr and Dares stopped searching, although they went back in 2019.