By and large, the United States depends on a patchwork of volunteer search and rescue teams organized and run by county sheriffs offices. The desperate family paid, nonetheless. There is a pause, ever so slight, and the radio squawks back to life. See Photos. She was super smart, cool, funny. I do think, though, that there might be some 'splainin' to do regarding the distribution of the GoFundMe cash. Late on that August day, a few hours after Sam wandered down Vesper, Kevin Dares sat inside Roccos, an upscale pizza restaurant in Belltown with Victorian wallpaper and novelty banh mi slices. He remembers Sams mother Lisa asking him what he really thought, around day four. A search ensued unlike anything the state of Washington has ever seen. The tether didnt lead back to Sam at all. Jamie Lakoduk is a big redheaded man who looks like he could rip you in half but has the demeanor of a teddy bear. Carr posted a picture of himself lying on the floor surrounded by expensive freeze-dried meals. Next to that a green backpack and a purple sleeping bag. Editor's Note: This article was updated April 30 to correct cellular satellites to cellular sites. A Christian. 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. She was 3,300 feet and 3 hard miles from the road, but she was on the right track. A Nazi? By 6 p.m., her boyfriend Kevin Dares was worried. Thats how you want to move, Carr recalls his dad telling him. The paper is there to log the hikers on Sunrise Mine Trail #707, a route that winds to the top of Vesper Peak. Nobody took her up on it and on Aug. 1, Sayers drove alone to the trailhead about two hours northeast of Seattle. Denice Rochelle, a Seattle real estate broker and woman of color, messaged Carr in August asking if hed teach her how to travel safely in the backcountry after following his exploits online. On the phone he is well-spoken. Volunteers brought up snacks, so many grocery store fried chickens that the team joked about the tidal wave of drumsticks. And please don't get me started on the multiple GFM accounts. Youve got to be a little crazy to do that.. She told him she would just walk up the trail a bit and be right back. Someone else commented on his swastika tattoo, calling him a Nazi and racist. Someone found his criminal history. A sexist and, just plain creepy, not to mention an opportunist taking advantage of grieving families. Originally from New Orleans, his leisurely drawl belying a sharp wit and quick tongue. His advice? In July, he posted a photo of a note hed placed on the car of a solo female hiker on Facebook. For 20 years, Ron Goins has worked with county search and rescue in Western Washington in one form or another. Many took issue with the supply bags full of energy bars, not a common SAR technique. He drove to the trailhead, a little over an hour and a half from Belltown, stopping at a gas station to buy a flashlight. Someone told Kevin 3 percent. I was a member of that group, but found them to be really gossipy, and petty. :-) grinchmas34 4 yr. ago I would love to be added to that group! Friends created a group page called Find Sam Sayers#findsamsayers, to be specificthat would grow to more than 30,000 followers. The conversation covers more ground than the searchers have. Its been an uphill battle. Those moats haunt Kevin too; he knows theyll never really be able to search the bands between ice and rock that fill up with snow every winter. They are the most dedicated West Coast county sheriffs Ive ever seen.. Nice family vacations, eventually a fourth home in Las Vegas. Psychics sent tips to the police Sam is near rocks, trees and water someone reported seeing her in a Walmart in Spokane acting strangely. Francis was a victim of that. Up at camp, just below the stone summit pyramid, the buzz of Facebook was distant. Polite. I drink too much on occasion, I smoke too many cigarettes, he says. Jamie hoped theyd repair the marriage. The camera moves on, and Sam continues ever upward. 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. Adams got hundreds of phone calls, including one from the general in charge of the Washington National Guard, who offered his own helicopters. 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. The wrong side of the mountain, he later told a sheriffs office sergeant. They stopped and chatted. That first night he wandered Vesper Peak with only the gear Sergeant Adams had on hand; by this point, his personal base had a canvas tent with a peaked roof, like a homesteaders cabin made of fabric. Seattle Met She preferred if more people thought she was punk than had cancer.Sam exuded vitality. Super driven. "Please take a moment to look at their faces and read and share their stories. It was around day 50 of the search; Kevin would ultimately spend over 100 on this mountain. Using his cell phone for illumination under a moon just past full, he retreated three-and-a-half miles back to his car. Kevin shut down the Facebook group and others sprung up in its wake. Dogs versus cats. Sam Sayers, described by her family and friends as an experienced hiker, set out on the morning of Aug. 1 for a solo hike in the North Cascades. They spotted a tree on fire, but no Sam. Some posters there report having read the public records on the FB Truth Group before it was made private. Charismatic in the most genuine way. Sam was a proud LGBTQ ally, thriving on activism. The dog handler (Cheryl) claimed Raven found a water bottle and a hat with mountain lion bites in them. After climbing more than 4,000 feet, up switchbacks and across boulder fields and finally across the patchy snow that marbles the stone pyramid of Vespers very top, Sam reached the summit. Om mani padme hum, a Tibetan prayer for compassion. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review). Theyve found no trace of Sayers. Samantha Sayers, 28, has been missing from a solo hike on Vesper Peak, Wash., since Aug. 1, 2018. Allison Williams 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. The duo hatched a plot to steal guns from a Bass Pro shop. I would just like to read at my pleasure and see what everyone else is thinking. And for how long? 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. Hi. The tattoos on her scalp, Kevin says, were armor. The 33-year-old lives just across Second Avenue and the eatery is more or less his office, where he runs a company that does real estate deals, renovations, and property management. So is the consenus that she had an accident and fell? Hes a journeyman carpenter, although hes worked a grab bag of blue-collar jobs. So we go to the woods, the mountains, the thin air of the alpine. 509 Olive Way, Suite 305, Seattle, WA 98101, Kevin recognized Sam from across the room. He cant. An estimated 1,600 people are missing in the wildlands of the United States. A paramount code in the search and rescue world, he said, is to not squawk about victories or defeats. On August 16, Adams emailed a doctor at Snohomish County EMS to ask how long a young, healthy person like Sam could survive on the berries that blanket the western Cascades in late summer. Sam Sayers Consulting. Tripp, Dares and Simonseth feel differently. Sam's mother, Lisa Yax Sayers, declined to be interviewed for this story. From his home in Minnesota, David Francis says that in the decade hes followed lost hiker cases, hes never seen anything like it. Samantha Sayers, Girard Native, went missing August 1st after climbing a mountain in Washington state. Well come up to you, the rogue search and rescue employee says. The two compromised. This one was different. Three years, and thousands of hours and dollars later, she remains missing. There are giant Reddit threads. Handler Cheryl Phillips and her dog, Raven. I know many of you have reached this point already, but there are some serious problems with what's going on now, and with how it's being presented. Spunky and creative, her room at her dads home is still covered in her photos and paintings. Idk, I am not there. 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. 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. 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. Trash. Through all this drama, Carr, Dares and others continued searching. In addition to the swastika, he has Tibetan mantras. Monchak would head up the amateur drone searches, but later broke from Kevins search to run his own. So forgive Kevin for being a bit antisocial sometimes. I went to high school with Sam, and her mom was always that uber-intense type. Left, the private search basecamp near Lake Elan; right, Kevin Dares, Bud Carr, and Clay Olsen. He tackled the elevation gain like it was a stroll down Second Avenue; his weeks of searching Vesper had whittled his already slim frame down whippet-thin. (GoFundMe) Search operations for a Seattle hiker missing since Aug. 1 have been suspended,. 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. If you're not cool with that thats fine too. The docs reply: Someone with mental fortitude and true survivor skills can find food to live on. Kevin began referring to himself as Sams fiance. Nothing panned out. Some accuse Bud Carr of these same tactics. Samantha Sayers is a 5-foot-8-inch white woman weighing 125 pounds. He called 911 early in the morning of Aug. 2. We are just clearing ground, he said. Yall come up here.. Another saw her descending the south side of summit. If Sam was distinctive for the head she shaved bald, Kevins signature trait is the thick New Orleans accent that betrays his Louisiana upbringing. 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. Three years, and thousands of hours and dollars later, she remains missing. Ok so, I know most of what's going on in there is prob BS and conspiracy theories, but in light of the recent days' events I am dying to get in, and nownthst it's secret I fear I never will. Two years later as Kevin Dares hikes uphill searching for Lakoduk, snow is a distant memory. Though Snohomish County had officially suspended its operation, Sergeant Adams came back up to snorkel Lake Elan in a thick dry suit. Her goal was to spend the night at the Hidden Lake Lookout for her 28th birthday. Two boots. Kevin and Sam on a Mt. That was nine months ago. The post called out search-for-money operators who peddle lottery-odds fantasies to vulnerable, grieving families.. :-), I would love to be added to that group! Samantha "Sam" Sayers, a former Girard resident, remains among the 43% still missing. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Another hiker told police he saw her the same day at the 6,220-foot summit and . In every community across Washington, families are facing the challenge of accessing and affording long-term care. The best they could do, the carrier said, was load the SIM signature onto Dawns mobile, effectively cloning Sams iPhone. He pauses and warns another search party member to watch his step. Two trekking poles. Lots of interesting characters. I dont understand why I cant find Sam, he says, stifling a sob. Like Sam, Jon summited a mountain and then vanished. Sure, but then it wouldnt be Bud, Dares said, adding At the end of the day the families that are searching dont pay attention to it. Impressed by Carrs careful hand-drawn maps and search experience, Francis recommended he be put in charge of the familys search operations. Kevin was still at the Verlot station when Sergeant John Q. Adams arrived around 1:30am. No one exactly knows. This is known. The longest in state history. All told, Carr and various configurations of volunteers have spent more than 70 days on this mountain in the North Cascades searching for her. When I dream shes always getting kidnapped. The unknown, he says time and time again, is the hard part.Sometimes he can joke about the idea that Sam had orchestrated her own disappearance, a kind of Gone Girl stunt that would melt the internet: Youve been chilling in the woods for five months? Even though in the decade hes done this work, hes never found a single person. Because at the end of the day, hes the only person out there helping you.. Its hard to say how many deep mine shafts and ventilation corridors, called adits, are dug into the mountainoften hidden in the underbrush. Let's treat everyone with respect. He loaded Kevin down with a helmet, food, and a headlamp and watched him sprint back up the trail. It had never happened before. 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. The elder Dares prepared hot meals of rice and meat and anything else on hand, calling it all jambalaya. In October the occasional snow flurries turned to regular snowfall, and temperatures continued their plunge. Folks questioned where all the money went. Brad Dad will sleep much better tonight, he says. Her online videos imply that the family is currently pursuing their own investigation into her daughter's disappearance. I dont think there is a malicious bone in that guys body, he said. A man with a dog showed up in the early days of the Idaho search in 2006 and offered his services. For $1,700. Samantha Sayers was last seen Aug. 1, 2018, while on a solo day-hike up Vesper Peak in the North Cascades. An area is scoured by hundreds of trained searchers, dogs and helicopters, and then weeks, months or years later, a random hiker stumbles onto something everyone missed. 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. Still, its hot and hes tired when his radio crackles to life. Overall, were down on recruiting and new members, Bill Gillespie, president of the Washington State Search and Rescue Volunteer Advisory Council told a reporter in early August. Though it was a weekday, the sunshine brought summer crowds; another hiker remembers seeing her eat a sandwich, lettuce protruding from between bread slices, while she chatted with rock climbers whod ascended one of the sharper faces. Sam had hiked Vesper Peak before, but its a rigorous trail. Been trying for a week now I thought it was shut down (I'm social media challenged) 3 I hold both genders to a different standard. And when hes searching for someone, he never expects to find them. They flag evidence, pink tape hanging limply from branches. 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. In a recording of Kevins 911 call, the operator asks what Sam had with her. One day stands out: August 4, three days in. Three homes. He points to the moats off the north side of the peak, where the steep bottom of the cliff meets the glacier. 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? 8:02 PM. 2023 www.goerie.com. That was what had pinged. Just one of those feelings. This was Sam Sayers in her element: fired up by the theatricality, by a tight-knit community. The aircrafts FLIR, an infrared camera, scanned for heat signatures, but the pilots also stuck their heads out windows. So forgive Kevin for being a bit antisocial. As a child, strangers in the store would comment on how beautiful her red hair was, to which she would only growl. Three years, and thousands of hours and dollars later, she remains missing. 447 followers 447 connections . David Francis, the man who lost his son in the Idaho Sawtooths, told a reporter that hed never seen anything like it and that they are the most dedicated West Coast County sheriffs Ive ever seen.. And everything tilted at an absurd angle 35 to 40 degrees making progress a thing measured in hundreds of feet, not miles. Vieira said Sayers wore a wig in high school, but one . Eventually, even that produced a splinter group, The Truth of the Sam Sayers Case UNCENSORED. The official search for Sam went on for 22 days. She had two hiking poles, a blue backpack, a beige sun hat and a dark gray wool beanie. Sergeant Adams thinks Sam is somewhere on that mountain, not far from where she was last seen. Why? The official search was suspended on Aug. 23 after a Herculean effort. Mohawked. He met Rachel when she was a senior in high school. That can lead to profiteering and exploitation, with some bad operators capitalizing on grief to make a buck. The AFRCC, or Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, was actively monitoring Sams phone for pings, a sign of brief connectivity to cellular sites. He gave up two things for Lent: social media and alcohol. At first, he was convinced Dares killed her . Kevin Dares. The Snohomish County Sheriffs Office launched 310 search and rescue missions last year, up 6 percent from 2017. Psychic Jerry Morris describes the murders in two unsolved cases, Samantha Sayers and Missy Bevers. Posters wait for resolution like a season finale; Im in too deep to stop watching now, wrote one. Hes a staunch defender of Washingtons system calling it the best in the country by a mile. Hes also a frequent online critic of Carr and hes an administrator for the The Truth of the Sam Sayers Case UNCENSORED Facebook page. A man that dresses in military camo but, being a felon, cant legally own a gun. Before she left on her solo hike on the Vesper Peak trail hed texted Be safesos me if anything goes haywire. Her replyThanks baby I love you.was classic Sam, straightforward and confident. On his foray into town that first night, Kevin had posted a plea on Facebook. Im a militant, he says, his voice softer than his camo wardrobe suggests. No way, he said in a comment, because women need more protection than men do. At a Unicorn bar drag brunch in 2017, Turner remembers Sams cheers at the flamboyant performance, the loudest person there, giving the biggest tips. They dont touch anything. They gave the bags to Snohomish County Search and Rescue, asking them to place them around the mountain. Someone sent Kevin a kind of fan fiction story they found online, casting Sam, Buck Carp, and Kelvin Daires as characters in a rambling tale with a menacing undertone. By 4 p.m. Oct. 17, Lakoduk had made it about 2.5 miles up the trail and was at 5,500 feet. In the Belltown apartment, they hung maps and scrawled Sharpie notes directly on the wall. Thats when two hikers coming down saw her. A GoFundMe page raised $60,000 for the search. The longest search in state history turned up nothing. Then the radio crackles, interrupting Carrs monologue. A Cup of Noodles, six hand warmers, some glow sticks. I think were looking for a body. https://www.facebook.com/groups/262800701091712/, Thank you! I'm not a member either but I'm just curious what was the final straw for you with Lisa? Theyve been picking their way uphill, high stepping over logs and brushing away bugs for four hours, methodically searching for any sign of Lakoduk. ' Lisa cried, he says, and gave him a hug. Samantha Sayers is healthy but is bald because she has alopecia, an autoimmune disease that leads to hair loss, her mother said on Facebook. The most paranoid among us believe that every person is shadowed by satellitesand thats probably not so far-fetched. He added fuel to the fire when one person asked if hed have left the note if it was a man. Each was dutifully logged. Around 10 a.m., Sayers signed her name in the logbook at the trailhead and then disappeared. Shortly after her brief encounter, the trail takes a hard turn to the hikers left. I said, 'I know you may not like this but I think shes dead. But then he met Dares. In late July, the Tacoma Mountain Rescue Unit Facebook page posted a photo (clearly photoshopped) of a bearded man with a Pinocchio-length nose, wearing a do-rag and smoking a cigarette. She asked about conditions ahead. The couple descended. But Dares and Carr kept going. All she had on her was "three sandwiches, some chips and water" and no cold weather gear for nighttime. Its Dennys. It was easy for fellow hikers to remember the young woman with the bald, tattooed head. Carr knew of Krieger, she was the cashier at his grocery store. An accomplished smoker, American Spirits blue. Except in the case of Sam Sayers. His girlfriend, Samantha Sayers, also disappeared while hiking. The duo spent 126 days on the mountain. Members of the Find Sam Sayers group began referring to themselves as Sams Army, calling elected officials en masse to demand more resources. Im a member of the truth group and the missing Seattle hikers group ( they discuss Sams case and others and its also my favorite because theres no stupid drama.) There was nothing down there, he says. Now that I've heard more theories on that front, his story sounds weirder and weirder. He moved to Colorado as a child and now lives in northwest Washington in a small, rented home on the Skagit River with his wife and three children. Im looking for vent stacks. Kevin took it in stride, told the stranger who he was, but held no hard feelings. Brad Tripp, her father, believes she missed the turn. The hiker turns his camera in a blurry panorama, catching blue sky over boulder fields, the sharp peaks that circle Lake Elan. Thanks to their flexible schedules, they cruised Cascade trails midweekSam in her sports bra and Kevin in jeans, a Southerners rebuke of Northwest tech-gear chic. 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. Sams mother, Lisa, started one titled Love, Light and a Miracle, buoyed by her faith that her daughter was still coming home. By the weekend, SAR teamsall volunteersfrom King, Skagit, Kitsap, Kittitas, and Pierce counties had deployed, along with four other mountain rescue squads.