A “Hail Mary” of an idea led rescuers to a 76-year-old woman with dementia who was lost in dense forest near Cumberland on the weekend.
Despite poor cellphone coverage in the area, the woman’s daughter suggested using the Find My Device app that both she and her mother had on their phones, in an attempt to pinpoint her location, said Comox Valley Search and Rescue search manager Paul Berry.
Berry said the daughter was taken up in an RCMP helicopter in an attempt to reach a vantage point where there would be a usable connection, and within a few minutes, it was determined that her mother was directly below.
It was a dramatic outcome, he said, but it still took rescuers another couple of hours to get to her due to the challenging terrain. The woman was found with a few scratches but otherwise unhurt, Berry said.
All told, the Saturday rescue effort stretched from about 2 p.m. to midnight.
Berry said there had been some spotty communication with the woman before she was located, but when that stopped, “we had a fear that her condition was deteriorating.”
At that point, he said search-and-rescue personnel from the Arrowsmith, Nanaimo and Campbell River teams were brought in, along with dogs and more drones, and planning began to start grid searching the area.
At the peak of the search, the effort included more than 40 search-and-rescue team members, about 20 other volunteers from the public, RCMP, conservation officers and others, Berry said.
Comox Valley Search and Rescue said in a social-media post that the large effort “demonstrated the positive power of the community.”
The post credited the lost woman’s daughter for “thinking outside the box” to bring the search to a successful conclusion.
The rescue of the woman overlapped with a second call to the search-and-rescue team around 10:30 p.m. Saturday about a missing hiker in the area of the Rosewall Creek Trail.
Luckily, the hiker had contacted Comox Valley RCMP via cellphone, and she was quickly located by a police dog, so the search-and-rescue team didn’t have to attend.
Cellphone coverage was poor in that area, as well, Berry said, so it was fortunate contact was made.
He said search-and-rescue teams continue to stress the need for preparation when enjoying time in nature.
“Certainly we want to encourage people to head outdoors,” he said. “We just want to make sure they have done some research on the area that they’re hiking to, they’re well-prepared, they have food and water and some sort of device to be able to communicate if something goes wrong.”
