Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Volunteers to
continue searching
for missing hiker

Meanwhile, a two more are
found after spending two
nights in Kahana Valley

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

An unofficial search was to continue today for missing hiker Robert LeFevre in Wahiawa Heights.

Authorities suspended the official search after a missing volunteer searcher walked out on his own, but volunteers will continue the effort.

Meanwhile, rescuers, some of them called off the LeFevre search, yesterday found a husband and wife stranded in Kahana Valley.

LeFevre, 27, was last seen March 5 at Office Depot in Waimalu, where he worked.

Fire Capt. Richard Soo noted Tim Stapp, a volunteer who got lost while helping search for LeFevre in the Wahiawa mountains, met rescuers at 7:20 a.m. at the trailhead near the end of California Avenue at Puninohi Street in Wahiawa.

Police and Fire Department Rescue 2 searchers agreed to continue the Wahiawa search because LeFevre's water bottle was found the day before, Soo said.

Police had brought dogs, and the Fire Department had brought a rescue specialist who went in near where the bottle had been found in the reservoir area near a stream.

Meanwhile, word came that a second rescue was going on in Kahana Valley, Soo said.

Detective Joe Self, in charge of the missing-persons investigation for LeFevre, had received a call that a policeman had responded earlier to a report that a rental car had been parked since Sunday high up in Kahana Valley. A check revealed it was rented by Richard Jackson, 62, of Vacaville, Calif., and had a parking pass for the Turtle Bay Hilton.

The Fire Department helicopter and fire companies, one each from Kaaawa and Hauula, then began a joint air-trail search.

Sometime after 10 a.m., helicopter occupants spotted two persons waving ti leaves off the loop trail in back of Kahana Valley, Soo said. They were Jackson and his wife Elena, 40, who had spent two nights in the valley. They were brought out at about 10:45 a.m., Soo said.

Police and fire rescue crews and state Department of Land and Natural Resources personnel had earlier searched the Wahiawa Hills Trail with dogs and a helicopter but called off that earlier search for LeFevre Sunday afternoon.

Lisa Calio said her husband, Calvin, worked with LeFevre over six months ago in the Navy Exchange Pearl Harbor delivery service and also wanted to volunteer to help. They were surprised to hear he entered the mountains alone.

"He never hiked alone," Lisa Calio said. "He always went with his wife."