News Story: Lost in the Grey Area Two hikers get lost in an ambiguous area of the Cleveland National Forest By D. Newman

It was just supposed to be a casual hike of the San Juan Loop in the Cleveland National Forest. A few hours and then be home by dinner. But it didn’t quite turn out that way. When San Clemente teenagers Jonny Yarbrough and Zach Stabley went hiking with some friends in mid-February and took a wrong turn, it turned into a six-hour ordeal that involved the help of two Sheriff’s Departments, a Good Samaritan, and a lot of survival skills. That’s because they were unlucky enough to end up in an area that’s geographically ambiguous – smack in the middle of Orange and Riverside counties. While their ordeal paled in comparison to the time spent lost and the severity of the injuries suffered by teenagers Kyndall Jack and Nicolas Cendoya, who got lost in the Cleveland National Forest on Easter, the search and rescue effort to find the lost teenage boys was hindered by the ambiguity of the area and the separate jurisdictions of Orange and Riverside Counties. Both incidents also underscore the imperative of being prepared, even for a day hike. At least one of the parents of the teenage boys who got lost would like to see a specific protocol adopted for the future, so there is more cooperation between the two sheriffs departments in dealing with this ambiguous geographical area, with the intention that future search and rescue efforts for lost hikers – no matter what their age – are expedited. Yarbrough, 17, and Stabley, 18, decided to go hiking with friends Casey Powell, 18, and Marco Colambatto, 16, also of San Clemente, on the afternoon of Feb. 16. They had all decided to hike that day because of the great weather. And, being surfers, the waves were too flat to go to the beach. Powell and Stabley had hiked the trail once or twice before. The foursome got to the trail around 2 pm, intending to hike the loop and be home before dark. But when they were about two-thirds of the way through it, Powell and Colambatto spontaneously decided to start running instead of walking. They wanted to break a sweat and jog the rest of the way, Powell said. “When we did that, we didn’t know there was a split,” Powell said. “So, we ended up taking the split.” Powell and Colambatto made it back to the parking lot in about 15 minutes. Since they had jogged back, they figured it would take the other two about half an hour to join them. After about an hour, when the other two hikers hadn’t make it back yet, Powell and Colambatto figured they had gotten turned around somewhere on the trail and decided to wait 20 more minutes. When Stabley and Yarbrough still hadn’t returned, Powell and Colambatto started asking other hikers who were finishing the loop if they had seen two teenage boys. Only one hiker mentioned that they had, but it had been an hour earlier when all four boys were still together, Powell said. Starting to panic, Powell and Colambatto approached another hiker, who turned out to be precisely the Good Samaritan they needed. Steve Buonaugurio had just come off the trail and had gone to the Ortega Oaks Candy Store, located at the Great Oaks campground, to order a sandwich. Realizing his wallet was in his car, he went back into the parking area when the teenagers approached him and asked if he had seen their friends. A parenting coach and former summer camp director, Buonaugurio was perfectly suited to this type of emergency situation. Knowing that it was getting dark out and the candy store was about to close, he immediately took charge. “Teenagers minimize everything,” he said. “I knew I had to step in. …I knew they wouldn’t’ be assertive enough and if I left, they wouldn’t find another adult.” Buonaugurio first suggested the teenagers let the candy store employee know what happened, to see what was typically done in these circumstances. The employee, Robin, immediately called 911 and then contacted owner Shannon Bedner to let her know about the situation, according to Bedner. Buonaugurio said he also advised Powell and Colambatto to call 911 and to call their friends to get the phone numbers of the parents of the lost hikers. In the meantime, Yarbrough and Stabley realized they had taken a different split than their friends, which ended up taking them to where they were a mile before. “We didn’t know what to do from there and took the wrong turn,” Yarbrough said. “We thought we were going the right way.” Around 5 pm, they realized they had come to a place they hadn’t seen before. They had no reception on their cell phones and no water, Stabley said. They tried to stay calm and follow the trail back. They even asked another couple who was hiking how to get back to the parking lot. They followed their directions, but it did not bring them to the parking lot. At 5:15, as it as getting dark, they came to another split. While they had initially been on the Chiquita Trail, the trail leading them to nowhere was unnamed, so they headed back to the Chiquita Trail, which they traversed for about 4 miles, Stabley said. Soon, exhaustion and fear set in. Lost in the dark As they tried to find their way back to the parking lot, they alternately walked and ran. With visibility low because of dusk and, then, darkness, that proved difficult. “The lowest point, prior to (being able to contact family and friends) was when I was walking and slipped on a rock,” Stabley said. “I landed on my tailbone and cut up my arm and was bleeding. When I was sliding, I thought I was going to fall into an abyss.” Both boys experienced muscle fatigue in their legs from all the hiking and running they had been doing. As it got dark, they also began encountering various animals, including pheasants, Stabley said. Suddenly, they saw that Yarbrough’s cell phone had service and they called 911, not knowing that their friends had already alerted the authorities. They also started getting text messages from the two safe teenagers. “Up until that point, I thought I was going to die,” Yarbrough said. “When we contacted the police, we felt safe.” They were told by the sheriff’s deputies to stay put in the general area they were in and to go into an open space so they could be spotted by helicopter. They found some open space about 15 feet below where they were and headed there. Whose jurisdiction is it? The Riverside Sheriff’s Department got the first call from the safe teenagers around 6 pm, according to Sgt. Lisa McConnell, PIO for the department. About five minutes later, the department contacted its search and rescue team, she said. Officers from the Lake Elsinore station were already on their way, she added. Because of where the first 911 call was made, it was believed the lost hikers were in Riverside County. But when the first sheriff’s deputies arrived, they were not that helpful, according to Powell. He said the deputies shone the lights of their cars on the trail head just in case the lost hikers were close by. But Powell said he and Colambatto were confident by this time that if they hadn’t shown up already, they were definitely lost somewhere in the forest. Buonoguario was also talking to the deputies and trying to impress the urgency of the situation onto them. It also appeared as if there was a lot of confusion and, then, a dispute between the two sheriff’s departments as to whose jurisdiction it actually was, Buonaugurio said. “At one point, we were going to look for them ourselves,” Powell said. “But the sheriffs said they didn’t want four missing people and we didn’t know how far out (in the forest) they were." The location of the lost hikers was eventually determined to be on the Chiquita Trail, in Orange County’s jurisdiction. Once this was determined, and because Riverside County did not have a helicopter on duty at the time, it asked for an assist from Orange County, which delayed the search and rescue effort. Orange County got the call at 7:15, according to Sgt. Jim Amormino, PIO for the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept. But the handover did not go smoothly, according to the safe teenagers, Buonoguario and Cathy Stabley, Zach’s mom. At one point, when OC deputies arrived at the candy store, they abruptly told the Riverside deputies to leave, according to both Buonoguario and Powell. One of the Riverside deputies insisted on staying, to their relief, they said, since he already knew what was going on. By the time Cathy Stabley got to the candy store, Orange County deputies were trying to pinpoint the exact GPS location, of the lost teenagers, from their cell phones. She witnessed a dispute between the two departments when she saw one deputy get hung up on by someone who said it wasn’t their responsibility, she said. Hearing the sound of coyotes in the distance was not too comforting either, she said. “At some point, we said, ‘How long is this going to take?’” Cathy Stabley said. “(Sheriff’s deputies) started talking around us.” Once the teenagers’ GPS location was finally ascertained -- at 8:10 p.m., according to Amormino -- Orange County deputies originally intended to get their search and rescue team assembled at the candy store and launch the helicopter from there. But the sheriff’s ground units were not able to secure a safe landing zone for the helicopter to initially land by the candy store. So, they changed plans and told the search and rescue team members to meet at John Wayne Airport, because they thought that would be the fastest way, as a central location in the county, according to Amormino. The lost teenagers were also difficult to rescue because they were in thick brush and there was nowhere to land, Amormino said. Search and Rescue delayed Back at the candy store -- which stayed open long after its 5 pm closing time to provide a safe haven with shelter, water and food for the safe teenagers, Buonaugurio and the parents as they started arriving -- Marco and Jonny’s parents had joined the Stableys, Buonoguario and the safe teenagers in waiting for the rescue to take place. As time passed, there was an increasing sense of worry and frustration. “There was a lot of dilly-dallying (by the authorities),” Powell said. “No sense of urgency whatsoever.” Meanwhile, the lost hikers were freezing, as they hadn’t brought jackets, and thirsty, as they didn’t have water, and growing more scared by the minute. Exacerbating the situation for them was seeing the helicopter come and go, on its first exploration of the area, without communicating with them at all, Zach Stabley said. “That was one of the most distressing moments,” Zach said. “They circled around us for 10 minutes and just left and didn’t tell us anything.” The helicopter returned a second time, about 20 minutes later, Zach said. This time, through a loudspeaker, they were told that the search and rescue team was on its way. The helicopter left again and then came back a third time, more than half an hour later, and finally dropped off blankets and a first aid bag, Zach added. Bedner provided the blankets, she said. While Zach and Jonny’s parents arrived at the area where the helicopter would eventually land after the rescue around 9:45 pm., it wasn’t until midnight that the hikers were finally rescued. This was because of the time it took to assemble the search-and-rescue team, which is all-volunteer and the volunteers are spread out, not just in Orange County, and to locate a safe landing zone near the boys, Amormino said. “If you locate and keep them in your view and there’s no danger, then two hours is not really a long time,” Amormino said. Once the boys were safely rescued, there was no de-briefing or any conversation about what had happened, Cathy Stabley said, although a fire truck and ambulance were on hand in case either teenager had suffered from hypothermia. While she was extremely relived to see her son and Yarborough rescued safely, she would like to see a specific protocol in place when hikers get lost, especially when it’s in the area between the two counties. And, there should definitely be better communication between the Orange and Riverside Sheriff’s departments in cases like this, she said. “Six hours is a long time, with a heightened level of worry,” she said. The lost teenagers were grateful to be rescued as well. “I learned not to take my family and friends for granted anymore,” Yarbrough said. Tips to prevent getting lost Whenever anyone gets lost in the Cleveland National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service is typically contacted right away by whatever sheriff’s department is handling the case. Brian Harris, PIO for the Forest Service, said the Forest Service was contacted close to 7 p.m., and eventually informed that Riverside County was handling the incident, with an assist from Orange County. Search and rescue is the responsibility of individual counties, not the Forest Service, which is a federal agency, he added. Bedner, for one, said the Orange County search and rescue team should have been involved a lot sooner. “And, that’s what I told the officer on the scene right away,” she said. “But there was no response. They were still trying to figure out where (the lost hikers) were.” On the other hand, she said from what she saw, the two sheriff’s departments did a good job of making sure no one was crossing the other’s boundaries. It also took longer than might have been expected because of the location of the trailhead, poor cell phone coverage and that it started getting dark just as the teenagers got lost, McConnell said. Some others hikers who have done the San Juan Loop said the trail should be much more clearly marked. “It’s really easy to get lost out there,” said Ellie Plouff, who works at Kaylani Coffee in San Clemente and has hiked the loop four or five times. “If you take one wrong turn, it’s easy to get lost. And, to find your way back, you have to look for familiar stuff. It’s a really unfamiliar area for us because there’s not much out there.” Amormino said there was nothing more that could have been done to expedite the teenagers’ rescue. “They were rescued as fast as possible and I don’t think there could have been any other way,” he said. “I’m glad everyone got rescued safely. I know when you’re out there, minutes seem like hours, but everyone was safely rescued and no one got hurt and that’s always the main goal.” Bedner has some advice for any hikers who come to the Cleveland National Forest, even if their intention is to only hike for an hour or so: bring water, snacks and enough clothing to protect you from the elements even if you start out on a hot, sunny day; educate yourself about the trail, even if you think you’re familiar with it; and ask questions and plan out your route ahead of time. “I really want to be a part of what’s going on (safety-wise), because I’ve been lost before and it was because I was under-educated,” Bedner said. “If I’m not familiar with an area, the best thing to do is ask questions.” She also suggests that if hikers do get lost, that family members try to make initial contact with them on their cell phones to make sure they’re OK, and then not call them again, to protect the life of the cell phone batteries, so the hikers can be reached by whatever department is trying to rescue them. Luckily, for Stabley and Yarbrough, as for Jack and Cendoya, they all were rescued in one piece. “They rescued them, and I was super happy about that, but I wish it had happened in a more timely manner,” Cathy Stabley said.