Update on Missing Cnet Editor James Kim
Fresh search teams prepared to join the hunt for a San Francisco man who set out on foot Saturday to find help for his stranded family in Oregon’s snowy coastal mountains.
Searchers tracking a creek in a steep canyon found a pair of gray pants on Tuesday that apparently belonged to James Kim, 35. His family said he was wearing them over a pair of jeans.
“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.”
His wife and two daughters were rescued Monday at their car, stuck in the snow on a remote road.
Kim went about two miles along the road then headed down into a drainage area, said Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police. The pants were found about a mile from where Kim left the road.
“It could be a sign he’s trying to indicate the path he was going,” Hastings said.
It also could mean Kim suffered severe hypothermia, said Dr. Jon Jui, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and 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.
Anderson said searchers are trying to recover another item he did not identify that might belong to Kim.
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.
Searchers pulled out of the lower canyon area Tuesday night because darkness heightened the risk. Anderson said searchers checked Black Bar Lodge, a popular summer spot along the Rogue that is closed in winter. They found no sign of him there.
Anderson…
