|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After being lost in the Ohlone Wilderness over the weekend, the East Bay Regional Park District — along with the help of other regional agencies — found an Oakland resident who went missing with his dog in the Tri-Valley expanse for nearly two days.
The large-scale search for Alex Stecher ended successfully on Monday after Stecher had failed to make it to his end destination at Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore on Saturday afternoon.
“He seems to be doing OK and is being assessed for medical needs,” EBRPD Police Lt. Patrick Brookens told the Weekly.
According to a press release from the park district on Monday morning, Stecher began his hike at the Sunol Regional Wilderness Preserve on Friday morning (May 17) along with his dog, Apollo. The two were due to get picked up at the Del Valle Regional Park on Saturday afternoon, but they never made it to their end destination, according to the press release.
Instead, a park ranger reported Stecher as an overdue hiker to the park district police dispatch at approximately 8:23 p.m. on Saturday (May 18), Brookens said.
Brookens said backpackers or hikers typically tell family or friends when they plan to be back from their trip so they can either get picked up or people know when to expect them. When they’re not back by the time they planned to be back, that’s when they’re considered an overdue hiker, which doesn’t necessarily mean they are a missing person at the time because things happen on trails which could make the trips last longer than originally planned, Brookens said.
But as those cases develop, it then pivots to a missing person investigation, which is what happened in Stecher’s case.
Stecher was found in such a wide area thanks to the EBRPD police and fire departments, the Alameda County Fire Department, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Unit, the EBRPD Search and Rescue Unit, Cal Fire and the California Highway Patrol.
“It’s a vast wilderness,” Brookens said. “We have activated Alameda County search and rescue through the office of emergency services and with that we’re able to get resources from surrounding counties so there’s a big mutual aid response that has come out to assist with this operation.”
