Search & Rescue

Last month, Kelsey Leak lost a lot. First she lost her pet parrot, Petrie, of seven years. Then she lost her boyfriend, Arne Dahl, when his fishing boat sank and they tried to swim to safety. She also spent a harrowing 24 hours wet and cold, waiting for rescue.

“I was sitting on that rock thinking, ‘I don’t know who’s gonna believe this,’” Leak said.

Dahl was a fisherman — a power troller. His boat, the 39-foot Randi Jo, was like a second home to the couple. Dahl and Leak had been dating for about a year, but their love had bloomed quickly.

“He came for dinner, and he didn’t leave for six months,” Leak said. “It was just a whirlwind.”

It was a clear, sunny day near Point Baker on Nov. 27. Leak says there was calm wind and the waters were foam. She and Dahl took the Randi Jo to gather firewood. On the way back to town, Leak curled up in the wheelhouse to take a nap with Petrie, her parrot, tucked into her shirt. Her golden retriever Mili was also with them.

What happened next was sudden.

“I woke up to being face-first slammed into the side door in the wheelhouse,” Leak said. “The door busted open, and I landed outside on the walkway. The boat just came to a dead halt.”

Dahl told Leak they’d hit a rock. They had a skiff along as well and used that to check out the situation. When they got around to the front of the boat, they saw a huge hole in the port side. They knew it would sink.

Dahl climbed back onto the Randi Jo to get his important papers while Leak stayed in the skiff. She had just learned how to drive it.

“I remember him running to the bow and he’s like, come on, come on, come get me,” said Leak. “My brain is trying to work, and I got up to the midship line again, and a wave pushed the skiff up under the lip of the sinking ship.”

The skiff sank, and the Randi Jo was sinking. The pair had to swim. To their left, they saw a tiny rock island called West Rock.

“My coat started to fill with water,” Leak said. “I was trying to get it off, and I went underwater. And I remember opening my eyes under the water and looking for my zipper.”

When she got back to the surface, she saw that her parrot was struggling.

“I got in my shirt and I took Petrie out, and she was just gasping. And I tried to salt-shaker the water out of her, and I was trying to swim with her, and he said, ‘You have to let her go, I need you to swim with me.’ And I just let her drift off, and I couldn’t even fit that in my brain,” Leak said. “I took a deep breath and just put my face to the water and just started swimming as hard as I could.”

Dahl, Leak, and her dog Mili made it to West Rock. It’s about 500 feet offshore, and Leak says it was about the size of a small living room. But it was high enough to stay above the tide. It had a concrete slab marker on top with reflectors and a light.

After resting for a moment, the situation started to hit Dahl.

“He’s like, ‘Oh my god, there goes my boat, we lost our skiff,” Leak said. “And then he paused and he’s like, ‘I just killed Petrie.’ Like, ‘Oh my God.’ And he looked at me. And then I can see his gaze lock on Joe Mace Island. And he was like, ‘We can do that. We can get over there. If we can get over there, we can go get help.'”

But to Leak, the distance looked at least twice as long as what they’d just swam. She’d had a bit of survival training. And her gut told her not to leave that rock. She tried to convince Dahl they should stay, but he insisted.

“You stay. Promise me you’ll stay right there. I’ll come for you,” Dahl said.

She watched him swim out, his head disappearing in the distance. And then it was just her and her dog Mili.

Leak knew that in a survival situation, she could not let emotion take over. So she told herself that Dahl must have arrived safely on the next island.

“Ok, he got out, he found Petrie,” Leak said, “They found some random bottle of Jameson and they’re just making fire on the beach getting warm. They’re having a party, they’re gonna come for me first thing in the morning.”

Leak and Milli faced a long, cold night. Leak’s clothes were still wet. They were synthetics, so they kept her somewhat warm. But it got down to around 26 degrees that night.

“It was a cold, hard night,” Leak said. “I couldn’t feel my feet. My whole body hurt the next day from shivering.”

Sea lions kept approaching, and Mili chased them away. Leak talked to them, naming the biggest one Brutus. She did toe scrunches to keep her feet working. She told Mili they had to stay positive. She tallied all the people waiting for her on the other side of the water. She sang songs in her head.

“Nickelback came on in my head, like ‘If today was your last day,'” Leak said.

Leak and Mili stayed awake all night. They cuddled on the hard rock till the sun broke. Leak could see a house across the water. She stood on top of the concrete block.

“I was waving my hands from 7:30 until 2 pm and trying to get somebody’s attention,” Leak said. “I had some moments on the rock that I was — I mean, it was daylight. I’m starting to process my grief.”

In the afternoon, she realized she might be out there another night, so she climbed down and started wringing out her clothing.

“That’s when I heard like putt-putt-putt of the boat,” Leak said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, somebody’s here’ and I looked over and see this big white boat with two skiffs towing behind it. I ran down all those rocks barefoot and I was jumping up and down, waving like a crazy person.”

The boat was the Dell II, coming back from a hunting trip. As soon as people found Leak, the search for Dahl started.

“Suddenly there were like skiffs everywhere,” Leak said. “We looked until way past dark, way longer than we should. The weather was starting to get crappy. I mean, it’s, it’s so hard to like give up.”

The U.S. Coast Guard and Wrangell Search and Rescue searched the area for hours, but no one found Dahl. Leak stayed in the area with friends of Dahl’s and they mourned together.

“I’m so happy I had the time with him that I did,” said Leak. “I had a year with Arne, and it’s a huge loss. But there are people out there that have known him his whole life, and they’re hurting too.”

Leak lost two of her loved ones to the ocean that day. But the positivity she cultivated on that rock island that kept her going till morning — it stuck. And it’s helping her get through the loss and focus on what she does have.

Leak is now back in Wrangell, where her family lives.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Leak’s hometown.

A Sitka woman has died after a boat capsized near Sitka on Sunday morning. Deanna Moore, 51, was a well-known counselor and advocate at Sitkans Against Family Violence and Sitka Counseling.

Two men on board were injured but survived.

Sitka police report that Moore, her husband, 56-year old Jay Stilwell, and 42-year old Roger Hames, Jr. were traveling in Stilwell’s C-Dory just outside of Three Entrance Bay when the boat was pushed into a rock by a wave. A second wave swamped the vessel, and it capsized.

Stilwell and Hames escaped into the water and were picked up by a nearby Good Samaritan vessel, but Moore remained trapped inside the boat. An Air Station Sitka helicopter responding to the scene lowered a rescue swimmer and retrieved Moore from inside the capsized boat.

She was flown to Sitka and was later pronounced dead at Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center. The two men were transferred to the Sitka Police Department’s emergency response vessel and also taken to Mt. Edgecumbe, where both were treated for injuries.

Moore’s advocacy work brought her to the airwaves many times. Most recently, she shared her perspective on historical trauma in a panel discussion on KCAW’s Talk of Southeast Alaska in October 2020.

U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Lexie Preston, at 17th District headquarters in Juneau, said Monday afternoon that the C-Dory remains semi-submerged in the same vicinity where it capsized. There is no visible fuel spill, and as yet no salvage plan.

The weather Sunday morning in Sitka was clear and cold, with light winds. However there was still a large residual swell from recent gales. The swell, combined with large tides, can generate what one witness at the scene described as “confused seas” in the vicinity of Three Entrance Bay.

Firefighters in Girdwood rescued a worker who got stuck in mud along Turnagain Arm Thursday, briefly closing the Seward Highway and offering a reminder of the mudflats’ danger.

Girdwood Fire Chief Michelle Weston said the surveyor became stuck in the mud in the Tidewater Slough, just north of town. He used his cellphone to call 911 around 10 a.m., sinking deeper by the time crews arrived.

“The individual was stuck in mud up to his waist with about 3 inches of water above that waistband,” Weston said.

Anchorage police closed the highway in both directions near Mile 90 as rescue crews worked to extricate the man.

The mudflats along Turnagain Arm are known for patches of mud that can entrap people like quicksand in the rising tidewaters. Writer MaryJo Comins shared a 2012 account of being trapped in the mud at the age of 10, losing her boots to it as she escaped.

Girdwood firefighters regularly receive calls for rescues from the mudflats, Weston said. Twenty years ago, the department developed a custom tool that sprays water from fire trucks directly into the mud around a trapped victim. A rescuer stands on backboards laid on the mud around the victim during the procedure.

“The person will work the mud rescue tool around the patient to free the patient,” Weston said. “And when this is happening, it’s also important for the individual to also work to try and get their legs free.”

Weston credited firefighter Stuart Parry, a longtime river and snowmachining guide and “great backcountry guy,” with rescuing the surveyor on Thursday. By 11:30 a.m. the man was freed from the mud. He declined medical attention, Weston said. The highway was reopened soon afterward.

Firefighters urge people recreating or working in the area to be wary of the mud.

“Where you might be one moment standing on one part that’s good, one part might not — the next part of the soil might not be good,” Weston said.

Cellphone reception along Turnagain Arm can also be spotty, she said. That means people should travel together, so others can summon help if someone gets stuck.

Searchers recovered the body of an overdue hiker from Sitka’s Mt. Verstovia on Friday evening.

76-year old Mike Motti was a veteran of Sitka’s Mountain Rescue team. He regularly climbed above treeline to a knoll overlooking Sitka, known locally as Picnic Rock, to celebrate his birthday.

Troopers were notified around 5 p.m. that Motti was overdue from his annual trek up the mountain. A ground team was deployed along with a helicopter from Air Station Sitka.

Searcher’s found Motti’s body about two hours later by the trail, just below Picnic Rock. He had apparently died of natural causes.

Motti was a fixture in emergency medical services in the region. Over his career, he helped organize and lead an emergency medevac department for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium before the advent of commercial medevac services. He was a wilderness medical associates instructor who taught many wilderness EMT courses for a variety of first-response agencies.

Don Kluting, who was Motti’s colleague for many years on Sitka Search and Rescue, says he had an understated approach to training. On Kluting’s very first day on the team, Motti harnessed him to ropes and sent him down a 100-foot cliff.

“My knees were shaking I’m sure as I went over the edge,” said Kluting, describing his first hour in training. “I’ve never rappelled before, I’d never been lowered over a rock face before or anything. And here I am being introduced to this gentleman that I’ve never met before. And you know, he’s in charge. And he’s tied this rope off to a tree. And they’re talking about, ‘Yeah, we’re just going to lower you over this edge and down to the bottom.’”

Kluting would eventually become captain of Sitka Search and Rescue and serve alongside Motti for 29 years.

Motti joined the organization in March of 1983 and was still an active volunteer when he died. Sitka Search and Rescue captain Matt Hunter says Motti was the team’s “most active member,” working as search dog handler, medic, and most recently, leading the incident management team.

Don Kluting doesn’t know how many lives Motti can be credited with saving, but he believes the way his life ended will resonate with the people who are dedicated to this line of work.

“How fitting is this, that he gets his last helicopter ride, and it’s a beautiful night, the moon’s out,” said Kluting, “And he died with his back against the tree looking at the most beautiful view ever.”

Memorial services for Mike Motti are pending.

Alaska Air National Guard crews out of Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson rescued six snowmachiners Monday who were stranded on a glacier in the Eastern Alaska Range near Isabel Pass, just north of Paxson. The Air Guard crew then medevaced one of the snowmachiners to an Anchorage hospital for treatment of injuries.

Alaska State Troopers launched the rescue operation after they got a report at around 7:15 p.m. on Monday that a group of six people on snowmachines were stranded in the mountains east of milepost 200 of the Richardson Highway. That’s about 75 miles south of Delta Junction.

According to a Trooper report, the SOS message from the snowmachiners said they were out of fuel and not dressed for the weather and that one of them was going into hypothermic shock.

Troopers then contacted the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, which dispatched an HC-130 plane and HH-60 helicopter to rescue the group.

“The conditions up in that area were relatively clear, so good for flying. Except there was no natural illumination — there was no moon,” says Alaska Air National Guard spokesperson Alan Brown.

He said when they got to the remote area, the C-130 crew fired an illumination flare so they could get a better look around. He said then they spotted the snowmachiners on the College Glacier, about four miles east of the Richardson Highway.

“They were able to hoist the injured one up immediately,” Brown said, “and then our pararescuemen were able to guide the remaining five snowmachiners to a safer spot on the glacier, where the HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter was able to land and pick them all up.”

The Trooper report says the helicopter brought the five uninjured snowmachiners to the turnout off the Richardson Highway at milepost 197. Brown says the helicopter then took the injured member of the group to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for treatment.

Troopers were unable to provide the names of the rescued snowmachiners.

Brown said Guard members from the 176th Wing’s 210th, 211th and 212th Rescue Squadrons participated in the rescue.

A Juneau fisherman and his two dogs are safe after a Tuesday morning Coast Guard rescue in Freshwater Bay, about 18 miles southeast of Hoonah.

Watchstanders at the Coast Guard headquarters in Juneau got a mayday call from the 33-foot Bailey Bay shortly before 5 a.m. The fishing boat’s skipper, Robert Johnson, said he was alone on the boat with his two dogs, and he was taking on water.

That was the last call Johnson made from the Bailey Bay.

Coast Guard personnel from Station Juneau, Air Station Sitka, and the cutter Douglas Denman responded. Several vessels in the area also heard the call and helped the Coast Guard narrow down the search area.

Just before 8 a.m., a helicopter from Air Station Sitka found Johnson — wearing a survival suit and signaling with a handheld flare — on a beach with his dogs in Freshwater Bay.

In a news release, Lt. Trevor Layman, with the Sector Juneau Command Center, said that the help of other mariners along with Johnson’s own preparedness contributed to the rescue.

“All these factors allowed us to do our job in an efficient manner to bring the man and his dogs safely home,” he said.

The crew of the Douglas Denman found the Bailey Bay submerged and reported that it was producing a small sheen. It reportedly has less than 75 gallons of diesel fuel on board.

The vessel owner plans to conduct salvage operations. The cause of the incident is under investigation.