RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, Calif. (AP) — At first, the rescuers couldn't believe their ears: After four days of grueling searching, they suddenly heard a faint female voice calling for help.
Over the next 90 agonizing minutes, the cries for help — and first faint, and then louder — led the search and rescue crew across a canyon, into a drainage and up several waterfalls to a near-vertical slope where lost hiker Kyndall Jack was clinging to rocky outcropping no bigger than a yoga mat.
The 18-year-old, who had been missing in Southern California's Cleveland National Forest since Sunday, had no shoes, was having trouble breathing and was severely disoriented from dehydration when she was found Thursday. The first thing she asked was what year it was, said Los Angeles County Reserve Deputy Fred Wenzel, who reached her first. Then, she asked for her mother.
"She was filthy from head to toe, her lips were black with dirt, her eyes were barely open and she had on no shoes," said sheriff's Deputy Jim Moss, a paramedic who was dropped to her by helicopter and airlifted her to safety in a harness. "She was just kind of clinging to the ledge on the cliff side, going in and out of consciousness."
Her rescuers were afraid to give her water, despite her extreme dehydration, because she had so much dirt in her mouth she could choke, Wenzel said.