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 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 to try 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 challenging terrain.
The woman was found with scratches but otherwise unhurt, Berry said. All told, the Saturday rescue effort stretched from about 2 p.m. to midnight.
Berry said there was 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. At its peak, the search included about 40 search-and-rescue members, about 20 other volunteers from the public, RCMP, conservation officers and others, Berry said.
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.
