By Mary O’KEEFE

On Sunday, members of the Montrose Search and Rescue [MSAR] team, part of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept.-Crescenta Valley Station, were first called out to assist the LASD Parks Bureau with a search for a teenage boy in the area of Crescenta Valley Park. CV Park lies within the City of Glendale but is actually under the jurisdiction of the LASD Parks Bureau.

“I responded from home,” said John Camphouse who was operations leader for the rescue and is a member of MSAR. “[Other MSAR members] left from the station and we met at the park.”

The teenager, who was described as non-verbal, had been hiking with his mom and sister at CV Park when he “bolted.”

“She said she glanced down and when she looked up he bolted from her,” Camphouse said.

This is not something he would normally do.

When he ran, his mom followed him up a hill but lost him when he continued to run; that was at about 9:30 a.m.

“By the time we got the call he had a good three-hour start,” Camphouse said.

The search began with LASD Parks Bureau but, due to the situation and location, many other agencies were called in to help. In addition to Parks Bureau and MSAR, Sierra Madre and Altadena Search and Rescue were called; Burbank and Glendale police were also on the search as well as Los Angeles Police Dept. air support.

“We started to expand the search to the fire road above CV Park, along the ridge line,” Camphouse said. Due to the recent rains the area is thick with vegetation especially chaparral.

One of the MSAR team members who responded to the call was Steve Goldsworthy. He was searching with fellow team members along the fire road. A mountain biker the team met as they were walking up the road said he had seen what could have been the boy but he was so far away he couldn’t be sure. He directed them to an area of the canyon where he thought he had seen him.

“We were hollering out his name and then I heard something. The only way to describe it was like two rocks clapping together. I turned to [Mike Leum another team member] and asked if he heard the [clapping],” Goldsworthy said.

Other members were nearby but in other areas of the road. No one else appeared to hear the clapping of the rocks but Goldsworthy said he heard it three times and knew it meant something.

He added that the Glendale-Burbank police helicopter was overhead.

He contacted them and asked them to search a little to the east of where they were flying.

“Then we heard, ‘I got him,” Goldsworthy said.

That was from a Burbank Glendale police helicopter crewmember.

The team members were stunned; they checked again just to make sure they heard correctly.

“‘We have him,” Goldsworthy said the helicopter team repeated. “They guided us to him as we ran on the fire road. [The boy] was down about 400 feet.”

Both Camphouse and Goldsworthy praised the Glendale Burbank flight team because the boy was in a very wooded area and not easy to see. The helicopter team guided Goldsworthy and team members as they went over the side of the road.

With the helicopter flying overhead the boy jumped down and was sitting under an oak tree near a little ravine, which was full of poison oak.

Goldsworthy was concerned how the boy would react to everyone “coming at him,” especially seeing someone in a uniform, so he took it slow.

“I called his name and told said, ‘Your mom and sister and I were looking for you,’” he said.

That seemed to calm the situation. One of the things his mom had shared with Goldsworthy was her son’s love of rocks, so that became a bonding action between the boy and his rescuer.

“I threw a rock down the hill; he did the same and even came over and fist-bumped me,” he said.

Finding the boy was just the part of the rescue, though; they then had to get him to climb up the 400 feet to the fire road and then get back to his family. The team’s first response was to use LASD air support and hoist him out of the area; however, the boy did not respond well to the sight of the helicopter. So MSAR went to plan B.

At first he wanted to keep climbing away, but Goldsworthy told him he had an easier climb and guided him. Another member was ready with a winch to help pull the boy up the hill but he was not comfortable with that either.

“So two members of the team walked in front of [the boy] and trampled down the vegetation and I followed him up the hill,” Goldsworthy said.

When they got to the fire road the boy indicated he wanted to get in the rescue vehicle. That made it easier for the team; they were able to bring him down the road to his family.

“We called in all the resources [because in this situation] the boy just vanished,” Camphouse said.

He added that the quick resolution could not have happened without the assistance of so many agencies working together. It took them about an hour from the time they found the boy to reuniting him with his family. Rescuers were glad they found him before it got dark, and cold.