Search continues for father
MERLIN, Ore. – Search teams who tracked a creek at the bottom of a rugged Oregon canyon Tuesday found pants they believe belong to a San Francisco man who set out three days earlier seeking help for his stranded family.
“This is frustrating. We are so close,” Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson said Tuesday evening. “There are people pouring their heart and soul into this. We are not going to quit until we find him.”
James Kim, 35, remained missing a day after his wife and two daughters were rescued at their car, stuck in the snow on a remote road in the Coast Range.
Searchers Tuesday afternoon found a pair of gray pants matching the description of those Kim was wearing when he was last seen, said Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police. The pants were found about a mile down the drainage from where Kim left the road.
“It could be a sign he’s trying to indicate the path he was going,” Hastings said. “It may be a sign, it may not.”
The discovery could signal that Kim suffered severe hypothermia, said Dr. Jon Jui, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Jui said severe hypothermia causes people to become disoriented and have a false sense of warmth, which can lead to them disrobing. “This is a bad sign,” he said.
But Anderson said Kim apparently was wearing the gray pants over a pair of jeans. He said searchers are trying to recover another item he did not identify that may belong to the missing man.
About 100 rescue workers and four helicopters were searching for Kim, following his footprints down a drainage called Big Windy Creek that leads to the Rogue River.
Anderson said he does not know why Kim left the road and went into the drainage area. “I hope to have the opportunity to ask why he did that,” he said.
“What they were doing is they’d lose his track, they’d cross the stream to see if they could pick it up on the other side and then have to go back,” said Anderson. “So they’re going through the water.”
Anderson said Kim, a senior editor for a technology media company, was wearing tennis shoes, pants and a heavy coat, but he was not wearing a hat. He would likely be within about five miles of the car.
“He did have two lighters with him,” Anderson said. “They survived nine days out there. They’re pretty resourceful.”
The Kims had been missing since Nov. 25, when they left Portland for home after a holiday trip to the Pacific Northwest.
On Monday, searchers in a helicopter spotted Kati Kim, 30, waving an umbrella at about 1:45 p.m. Her daughters Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, were airlifted to Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass.
Sabine was admitted to the hospital, and her mother and sister stayed in her room overnight. She was discharged Tuesday morning, and the three left.