Everyone had a theory. Sam and Kevins friends waded into the fray, trying to correct misinformation; one of his sisters got into arguments in comment sections. Nothing panned out. By 4 p.m. Oct. 17, Lakoduk had made it about 2.5 miles up the trail and was at 5,500 feet. I was a member of that group, but found them to be really gossipy, and petty. Lakoduk continued up. In every community across Washington, families are facing the challenge of accessing and affording long-term care. They gave the bags to Snohomish County Search and Rescue, asking them to place them around the mountain. His voice is strained, sometimes wavering with panic. Gifts processed in this system are not tax deductible, but are predominately used to help meet the local financial requirements needed to receive national matching-grant funds. How to travel in the mountains. THE TRAIL REGISTER may be the last tangible piece of Sam on Vesper Peak, the last one you can physically touch . Hearing that, Kevin can only give a scornful laugh. It's a sad shame. Nice family vacations, eventually a fourth home in Las Vegas. That person wouldve walked out by now, I would think.. Her boyfriend went to look for her that night and couldn't find her, so he alerted authorities. Up at camp, just below the stone summit pyramid, the buzz of Facebook was distant. He watches crime shows, so he tells me, Theres always a dungeon where they lock them up. Hi. David Francis, the man who lost his son in the Idaho Sawtooths, told a reporter that hed never seen anything like it and that they are the most dedicated West Coast County sheriffs Ive ever seen.. A search organized. Lakoduks father, Tripp, confirmed this as did Dares and Jamie Lakoduk. Om mani padme hum, a Tibetan prayer for compassion. She told him she would just walk up the trail a bit and be right back. Samantha "Sam" Sayers, a former Girard resident, remains among the 43% still missing. Between Carrs military mindset and Kevins own stint in the Navy, they approached the mountain with a tactical eye. He peeks under logs and behind boulders. Reasonable. But then he met Dares. Samantha Sayers is healthy but is bald because she has alopecia, an autoimmune disease that leads to hair loss, her mother said on Facebook. Carr owns and operates 49th Parallel, a private search and rescue group located in Concrete and spent at least 70 days searching for Rachel. Snohomish County Sheriffs Office. Two years later as Kevin Dares hikes uphill searching for Lakoduk, snow is a distant memory. Adams, a lawman with a chiseled face that eschews theatrics, advised the frantic boyfriend not to go back out alone in the predawn hoursbut he also wouldnt stop him. Washington is not his natural environment, growing up as he did in the swamps of Louisiana, trapping alligators and selling their hides. Revised April 2021. When she graduated from Collegiate, Sayers went by the last name of Steinbaugh, according to the Erie School District, who confirmed her enrollment in 2018. Volunteers still showed up, most unbidden, like a trucker from Memphis who read about Sam online and dropped everything to come climb a mountain in a place hed never been. The first missing person Carr searched for was Patti Krieger in 2010 after the 65-year-old woman disappeared on Sauk Mountain, also in the North Cascades, just miles from Carrs home. The vegetation is so thick and the terrain so rugged its entirely possible to walk by a clue, or an entire body, and not see it. Life had narrowed to a singular purpose, to comb a few square miles of earth for a trace. They were surprised at how she was dressed, thermal tights under shorts and a long-sleeved shirt under a NASA tank top, but Lakoduk seemed confident, had other clothes in her pack and was moving very well they told police. Yall come up here.. Sayers' family has started a GoFundMe campaignto purchase food and survival gear that rescuers have been dropping in 20 one-pound bags in various locations so Sayers might stumble across them. Dogs versus cats. Soon after meeting Kevin, she left a gig at Seattle Repertory Theatre to work entrepreneurial hustles, pursuing a real estate license and marketing intriguing products shed found online, like an inflatable lounger. Its a sad, broken system in the United States. Late on that August day, a few hours after Sam wandered down Vesper, Kevin Dares sat inside Roccos, an upscale pizza restaurant in Belltown with Victorian wallpaper and novelty banh mi slices. After a $20,000 reward was announced, the trail swelled further. When asked if he was a racist, she said in a text Ive seen/heard/have no data point to support such accusations. They havent met up but they plan to, for which she is so grateful., Still, Carr remains a villain in many circles. Dont touch anything, he says. And a common refrain, the question of whether Sams disappearance could be foul play; Adams simply never found anything to suggest that possibility. I dont understand why I cant find Sam, he says, stifling a sob. Hed recently graduated. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review). As clues go, its not much, just a name: Sam Sayers. As we near closer to the end (I hope, for everyone's sake), her followers expect (and are owed IMO) an explanation, but will she really be prepared to do that once the time comes? Sam was raised in the Erie, Pennsylvania area where her parents Ron and Lisa still live. I never once even peeped at it before because I was under LYS's cult spell and I thought if I deflected there I'd get blocked from her page. Seriously they are on a power trip now. The trail was hard to follow, obscured by snow, above the tree line and exposed to the elements. She had two hiking poles, a blue backpack, a beige sun hat and a dark gray wool beanie. He cant. He gave up two things for Lent: social media and alcohol. At some point, she realized things were bad and turned around. I actually got kicked out of the group for calling the admins drama queens . We can get statistics on auto accidents but theyre not collected for people missing in the wilderness., The search for Jon lasted only two days before the county sheriff pulled out and, as David remembers, told him he should give his son up to the mountain. Karen hiked ahead of her partner when the two reached snow level at an elevation of about 5,000 feet, on the east side of Mt. Francis was a victim of that. Now I can get Bud to focus on Vesper again.. As a child, strangers in the store would comment on how beautiful her red hair was, to which she would only growl. Not to mention, my husband from day one (I've been following since 8/5 or so) has said the BF has something to do with it. Theres no official count; when the U.S. Department of the Interior tried to build a database of such events, the effort drew criticism as an expensive, malfunctioning boondoggle. She disappeared on August 1, 2018 after a day of solo hiking at Vesper Peak near Seattle, Washington. Amid conifers and half-frozen lakes, we can feel free from our modern tangle of surveillance, even as tenuous threads still leash us to the world below: ever-pinging cell phones, footsteps on an established trail. Shortly after her brief encounter, the trail takes a hard turn to the hikers left. On the mountain, Kevins crew of a half-dozen hardcore searchers, most of whom had never met Sam, became a little band of brothers. So, Dares understands why county search and rescue crews suspend searches; they have other tragedies to attend to. Steve Monchak, an area drone photographer, reported that hed been at the Big Four ice caves the day Sam went missing, just a few miles away; he told deputies he spotted two suspicious men there. No ones seen a single trace of Sam Sayers since. He was accused of being a chauvinist. One woman said her brother-in-law couldve abducted Sam, given a coincidentally timed vacation. (GoFundMe) Search operations for a Seattle hiker missing since Aug. 1 have been suspended,. Below the steep north face of Vesper Peak, the edge of a glacier formed a moat at the base of the cliff, its bottom impossible to reach beneath the ice. You owe me 99.999 percent of those royalties, hed tell her. A Nazi? This was on the last day of the search before they stopped for the season. She and Kevin, a single dad of three, moved in together. The desperate family paid, nonetheless. But one day in August, one womans tethers disintegrated in a moment. It felt true; he and Sam had lived together for more than a year, had talked about marriage. Sam Sayers is a 5-foot-8-inch white woman who weighs 125 pounds. Hed read about it on Facebook and decided to help. And the military stuff, thats part of his Buddhist-warrior ethos and hes never claimed to have served. SM is an admin but does not act like the other admins.Basically what I saw was half of the people think SS fell from the mountain and the other half think she was killed off the mountain. Let's treat everyone with respect. I also believe quasi-conspiracy theories like missing411 perpetuate the underestimation of the dangers of going unprepared or overconfident into the wilderness by suggesting that there are other causes to the events other than accidents in the wild. The tether didnt lead back to Sam at all. We are just clearing ground, he said. A dozen PJs, or Air Force Pararescue personnel, came up from Oregon; the navy flew a mission. The dog handler (Cheryl) claimed Raven found a water bottle and a hat with mountain lion bites in them. There are the obvious theories including wild animal attacks, getting lost or falling. In July, he posted a photo of a note hed placed on the car of a solo female hiker on Facebook. Carr, at the time 19, started dating a girl and became friends with her dad, a crazy backwoods hillbilly who was convinced society would collapse in 2000. Go to the creek. The trail register may be the last tangible piece of Sam on Vesper Peak, the last one you can physically touch, but there was one more sign of her. Early on he told deputy Peter Teske, who would also play a huge role in the search, he had a feeling we better throw everything weve got at this one, at least for a couple of days.. Sams trace. Its hot, humid and even he a Louisiana native is sweating. She was last seen wearing dark gray pants and a maroon hoodie. However, tens of thousands remain missing for more than one year according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs). That sunny August Wednesday, a hiker stopped a few hundred feet below the top, right above the meadow where Kevin would one day erect his camp. Aug. 29, 2021 If Sam was distinctive for the head she shaved bald, Kevins signature trait is the thick New Orleans accent that betrays his Louisiana upbringing. In addition to the swastika tattoo, Carr posted a video since deleted of himself wearing a hat with an Iron Cross. Now, his body is covered in ink, including a swastika, although its oriented in the traditional Buddhist way, not the Hitler way, he said. The Hidden Lake trek is 8 miles round trip and steep, gaining 3,300 feet in 4 miles. MARBLEMOUNT, Wash. This is tough country. Sam Sayers [Handout] The Theories With nearly 1,600 people missing in national forests and on public land, it is difficult to speculate about the causes of all these missing people. Its hard to say how many deep mine shafts and ventilation corridors, called adits, are dug into the mountainoften hidden in the underbrush. Seattle friends, the 27-year-old wrote in 2018, Im going hiking this Wednesday and tackling Vesper Peak Message me if you want to tag along.. I've been getting a lot messages the past few days. But since moving to Seattle in 2012, and spending months of his life living on Vesper Peak, hes accustomed himself to the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. Her poor mother has lost herself in this horror and become a different person. An accomplished smoker, American Spirits blue. The U.S. Forest Service denied access for their helicopter, and Kevin rallied Sams Army to make phone calls to USFS offices, politicians, anyone who could make noise. Overall, were down on recruiting and new members, Bill Gillespie, president of the Washington State Search and Rescue Volunteer Advisory Council told a reporter in early August. Posters wait for resolution like a season finale; Im in too deep to stop watching now, wrote one. She preferred if more people thought she was punk than had cancer.Sam exuded vitality. At first, he was convinced Dares killed her . Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. And so, 667 days after a 28-year-old Moses Lake woman vanished into these hills and 657 days after the Skagit County Search and Rescue team suspended their search, a ragged group of volunteers pauses to take a breather. Ive got her, Dares said. Adams got hundreds of phone calls, including one from the general in charge of the Washington National Guard, who offered his own helicopters. A white supremacist? The longest search in state history turned up nothing. Would a glove or a boot bring closure to a family? I just do not know what to think, but I am guessing she fell, and the area that required technical climbers was not searched properly? Dares drops his pack. At least, he says, the man was looking. I'm just glad I'm seeing the "light" now (pun totally intended). There the route passes across the south fork of the Stillaguamish River; hikers hop across boulders while the knee-deep creek rushes beneath. Samantha Sayers is a 5-foot-8-inch white woman weighing 125 pounds. As clues go, it's not much, just a name: Sam Sayers. Jamie Lakoduk is a big redheaded man who looks like he could rip you in half but has the demeanor of a teddy bear. That was what had pinged. Though Snohomish County had officially suspended its operation, Sergeant Adams came back up to snorkel Lake Elan in a thick dry suit. I think were looking for a body. Then he began to rally Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue through his radio. The most paranoid among us believe that every person is shadowed by satellitesand thats probably not so far-fetched. Amateur sleuths followed the case like the podcast Serial or a season of True Detective. Carrs ceaseless self-promotion. Samantha had planned to summit Vesper Peak in Washington's North Cascades, a route she'd taken before, and told family she'd be gone from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Family says Samantha Sayers . So forgive Kevin for being a bit antisocial sometimes. A search ensued unlike anything the state of Washington has ever seen. It looked like the moon.. Those moats haunt Kevin too; he knows theyll never really be able to search the bands between ice and rock that fill up with snow every winter. Too much vegetation. ' Lisa cried, he says, and gave him a hug. Found her car, the last one in the lot and searched part of the trail using a flashlight hed bought on the way. Impressed by Carrs careful hand-drawn maps and search experience, Francis recommended he be put in charge of the familys search operations. It was late July and Samantha Sayers was looking for hiking partners on Facebook. He looks drained. He drove to the trailhead. April 23, 2019 And please don't get me started on the multiple GFM accounts. Rainier. The first winter storm of the year was rushing in, and snow was falling. In addition to the swastika, he has Tibetan mantras. Samantha Sayers, 28, has been missing from a solo hike on Vesper Peak, Wash., since Aug. 1, 2018. In his book The Cold Vanish he acknowledges that its a rounded guesstimation although he believes 1,600 is wildly conservative.. Hes a staunch defender of Washingtons system calling it the best in the country by a mile. Hes also a frequent online critic of Carr and hes an administrator for the The Truth of the Sam Sayers Case UNCENSORED Facebook page. Three years, and thousands of hours and dollars later, she remains missing. I would just like to read at my pleasure and see what everyone else is thinking. If you're not cool with that thats fine too. It was easy for fellow hikers to remember the young woman with the bald, tattooed head. See Photos. Super driven. Healthy debates are natural, but kindness is required. He moved to Colorado as a child and now lives in northwest Washington in a small, rented home on the Skagit River with his wife and three children. They think, This is my chance to be a part of one.. She spoke her mind. Jamie hoped theyd repair the marriage. He took to Vesper and pioneered his own way off trail; from the brush he counted more than 100 people on the day the reward was posted. His advice? But even he doesnt think Carr is a grief profiteer or a charlatan. Im a militant, he says, his voice softer than his camo wardrobe suggests. So thats cool. WA hiker Samantha Sayers went missing on 8/1 a solo day hike to Vesper's Peak. She was expected to return that evening and check in with family, the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office reported. For more information, please see our Kevin Dares with Sam at a New Orleans wedding in 2017. After she passed the two hikers, Lakoduk continued up. See Photos. Sam's mother, Lisa Yax Sayers, declined to be interviewed for this story. Someone claimed she was on an episode of The Bachelorette. Her mother posted daily updates that were parsed for clues. Apparently the hat matched the description of the hat Sam had, but no one knows for sure and no one knows what happened to them after. A hiker remembers seeing Sam veer down toward the peaks southwest side around 3pm. Finally, in mid-October, Kevin and Bud Carr made the decision to pack up their camp and come down the mountain. They remembered her distinctive bald head, crowned with a star tattoo like a Roman laurel wreath. Sam had hiked Vesper Peak before, but its a rigorous trail. It was there, in his rising panic, that Kevin tripped and broke his flashlight, forcing him to turn back. Flashlight in hand he started up the dirt path around 10pm, quickly through the first third of the hike, which rambles through thick forest. The docs reply: Someone with mental fortitude and true survivor skills can find food to live on. He tackled the elevation gain like it was a stroll down Second Avenue; his weeks of searching Vesper had whittled his already slim frame down whippet-thin. Carr continues talking about his tattoos, all of which (except for the ones on his back) he did himself, Yes sir, Im ambidextrous, he says. Dares is 500 feet up the hill, obscured by the thick vegetation. They found boot prints but that's it. Time will tell. Carr became the search operations manager, on the recommendation of Francis. The Snohomish County Sheriffs Office launched 310 search and rescue missions last year, up 6 percent from 2017. Carr posted a picture of himself lying on the floor surrounded by expensive freeze-dried meals. He added fuel to the fire when one person asked if hed have left the note if it was a man. I want to understand that she had to "put up a front" in order to properly follow other leads, but like how dare you rally and petition and raise money for volunteers to go searching if you never really felt she was there in the first place. The 28-year-old left at eight in the morning, according to ABC News,. Hes going to have a cigarette, a bad habit that accelerated after Sayers disappeared, and take a nap while the four searchers below him make their way up. They told her theyd turned back at 6,200 feet. Crucially, searchers looked every place a hiker could have conceivably fallen, but some couldnt be completely ruled out. Date of Birth: August 13, 1990 Erie, Pennsylvania. I hope I'm being polite as I say this, I'm not trying to attack anyone or assign blame. The conversation covers more ground than the searchers have. Carr took this intuition seriously. And its unfair. Kevin, Carr, and the others made occasional trips down to visit their children and gather gear, but their lives had become ruled by the command tent maps, the bearings and grid lines plotted around PLS: Sams place last seen. Missing people usually leave a signature, family members filled Ziploc bags with snacks and instructions for Sam, Cheryl Phillips, a dog handler from South Carolina, and her search dog Raven, In October the occasional snow flurries turned to regular snowfall, Ski Areas Shift to Mountain Bike Parks in Summer, The Insider's Guide to Visiting North Cascades National Park. To Kevin, Carr was a generous stranger turned close friend, willing to take the Louisiana tenderfoot through the rugged terrain around Vesper Peak. After summiting Washington state's Vesper Peak on a day hike in August 2018, Sam Sayers disappeared. He pauses and warns another search party member to watch his step. He liked camping. People whod donated to the GoFundMe, which Kevin says was used entirely to fund the private search, wanted to know if the men had been goofing around up there, having a drug holiday around the campfire. Point of Disappearance. Were going to have to make some changes.. Back on the mountain the rest of the group makes it to Lakoduks final resting spot. Roccos is basically his Cheers; everybody knows his name. Missing people usually leave a signature, whether physical, electronic, or even a smudge of heat to be traced. It even had an iron box stove inside. But, if youre not crazy youre not quitting your job, packing up all your (stuff) and then going in the woods for somebody youve never met. Everyone agreed that the public would take it all more seriously if people understood their solid commitment. Kevin agrees to wait. For her 28th birthday in 2019, they planned to hike to the Hidden Lake Lookout. Seven years of Dateline's Missing in America: 156 still missing. Before he does, he climbs onto a boulder to see if he can spot the group below. On the phone he is well-spoken. They clicked immediately. Saw this article on another sub and thought you guys would find it interesting. It was moving at first, but now I just see it as a sociological experiment. Trained dogs sought scents and human trackers scoured for footprints; others examined the creek. An estimated 1,600 people are missing in the wildlands of the United States. But something catches his eye to the right, in a depression beneath a tree, a flash of orange out of place in the rain-fed greenery. He met Rachel when she was a senior in high school. Sam left on the trail at around 8 am and was expected to head home and check in with her boyfriend, Kevin Dares, that evening by 6 pm. It was Adamss first year as a search and rescue sergeant, taking over from a predecessor who oversaw SAR response for 22 years at the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office. His girlfriend, Samantha Sayers, also disappeared while hiking. Over the next 10 days, 137 volunteers spent roughly 2,000 hours combing the mountain. (Rescue calls) are running a little bit ahead of where weve been traditionally, and the severity of injuries has gone up. He knows he should be angling left, to meet up with the group, but for some reason he wants to trend right a bit more. Gentle, kind and quiet. Finally, the last push to Vesper: a short traverse from Headlee to tiny Lake Elan, still partially frozen, and the triangular peak half-covered in snow. I drink too much on occasion, I smoke too many cigarettes, he says. There are giant Reddit threads. His girlfriend, Samantha Sayers, also disappeared while hiking. An area is scoured by hundreds of trained searchers, dogs and helicopters, and then weeks, months or years later, a random hiker stumbles onto something everyone missed. Why? The staff checks on him every 10 minutes, more motherly than waiterly. Psychics and shamans relayed visions. I'm a member of the truth group and the missing Seattle hikers group ( they discuss Sam's case and others and it's also my favorite because there's no stupid drama.) The wrong side of the mountain, he later told a sheriffs office sergeant. No one exactly knows. Left, the private search basecamp near Lake Elan; right, Kevin Dares, Bud Carr, and Clay Olsen. Youve got to be a little crazy to do that.. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Not drinking makes nights harder.I dream, he says, the bayou drawl heavy even as his voice gets quiet. That first night he wandered Vesper Peak with only the gear Sergeant Adams had on hand; by this point, his personal base had a canvas tent with a peaked roof, like a homesteaders cabin made of fabric. This happens all the time. At the same time a surge in outdoor recreation during the pandemic, and a corresponding increase in search and rescue calls, has added pressure to an already overtaxed system dependent on an aging volunteer base. Rachel Lakoduk was petite, freckled and redheaded, too. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. At a Unicorn bar drag brunch in 2017, Turner remembers Sams cheers at the flamboyant performance, the loudest person there, giving the biggest tips. I had my flashlight going, banging, screamingno word, Kevin says to the 911 operator. In his short tenure, Adams had already honed his instincts on missing hiker cases. It lasted 22 days. Snow fell and Carr and Dares stopped searching, although they went back in 2019. Seattle Met. A Cup of Noodles, six hand warmers, some glow sticks. Sams phone pinged, a sign it was on and working. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. I dont think there is a malicious bone in that guys body, he said. As for the money, Carr never asks to be paid. Could his media approach be worlds different? One saw her eating a sandwich. She happily bought them and said in an interview that he had integrity. So forgive Kevin for being a bit anti-social. People made YouTube videos. Using his cell phone for illumination under a moon just past full, he retreated three-and-a-half miles back to his car. Someone sent Kevin a kind of fan fiction story they found online, casting Sam, Buck Carp, and Kelvin Daires as characters in a rambling tale with a menacing undertone. The duo spent 126 days on the mountain. It went viral. Later, her husband Jamie, will receive a bag of her gear from the coroner and place the items on the floor of an empty room in the house they used to share. The official search started. Despite her healthy pallor, strangers assumed shed just undergone chemotherapy, and the sympathetic clucks wore on her. LYS suddenly dismissing her vehement faith that SS was/is on the mountain. Dares insisted on paying Carr $500 a week during the heat of the Sayers search. It was easy for fellow hikers to remember the young woman with the bald, tattooed head and the wide, easy smile. Cookie Notice And then, a breakthrough. Hes accused of being a Nazi, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a charlatan. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The longest in state history. By 6 p.m., her boyfriend Kevin Dares was worried. Reflecting on that time, Dares said lots of people offered to help and some followed through.