‘Help’ Scrawled In Dirt Leads Hunters To Missing Idaho Teen

HAYDEN, ID — When he and his stepson found the world “help” scrawled in mud during a recent hunting trip, Chris Trumbich thought another hunter might need help carrying his quarry from the woods. But something seemed “creepy,” 15-year-old Ryle Gordon said, so he snapped a photo and turned it over to a search party combing the woods for a missing teen.

It’s a good thing Gordon connected the dots to an alert the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office had posted on its Facebook page a couple of days earlier regarding the teen, who was believed to be endangered. Kathryn “Katie” Ogle, 19, might not be alive if he hadn’t.

The sheriff's office post asked for the public’s help in finding Ogle, who left her home in the northwest Idaho town of Hayden on Nov. 1 without shoes or appropriate clothing for the elements. She had multiple medical alerts, the post said, and the cognitive ability of a 10- or 12-year-old.

The search party was about to pack up for the night Saturday, Nov. 3, when Gordon and Trumbich flagged them down, showed them the photo and led them to the place where it had been taken, near their family cabin in the Hayden Lake area.

They heard a faint voice from the woods.

“Hello?” one of the rescuers called, Trumbich told television station KHQ. “Then, we heard a ‘hello’ over the ridge.”

The rescuers followed Ogle’s voice down a steep hill and found her. She was alive, but not in great shape, and was scared. To stay alive, she had taken some items from the cabin, including a sleeping bag. She had also opened some canned nuts and used some matches.

“She looked very scared when she came out, like she was scared she was going to get in trouble like we were going to yell at her for being in the cabin. Katie, if you're watching this, we're just happy you're alive," Gordon said in a KHQ broadcast.

Ogle was taken to a hospital to be checked out before she was reunited with her family.

“She could have been dead,” Gordon told ABC News. On the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, Gordon wrote the sheriff said Ogle may not have lasted the night if he and Trumbich hadn’t followed their instincts.

“We aren’t asking to be called heroes,” he wrote. “We honestly are you two average Joe guys that were in the right place at the right place at the right time. Everything happens for a reason, people. Don’t forget that.”

Search and rescue crews from Bonner, Spokane and Shoshone counties joined Kootani County officials in the search for the missing teen.
More than 60 people from search and rescue crews from Kootenai, Bonner, Spokane and Shoshone counties were looking for Ogle when she was found. They searched by air and from the ground, and also used canine units, KING-TV reported.

Photo via Google Maps