Search & Rescue

At 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, missing person Lucas Schneider turned himself in to Juneau police.

Police say Schneider walked into the station downtown, where he was arrested for pre-trial probation and parole violations and then taken to Lemon Creek Correctional Center.

Schneider, a resident of Juneau’s Glory Hall for several months, was reported missing last Friday.

On June 22, Schneider told Glory Hall staff he was going camping at Echo Cove. He was expected back at the drop-off point a week later.

Glory Hall staff first tried to report Schneider missing early last week, but Juneau Police waited to file the report until he had missed a Thursday appointment.

Last week, Glory Hall staff and residents searched for Schneider in the Echo Cove area several times without finding him. It’s not clear how he got from Echo Cove back to Juneau.

The Glory Hall is working to contact Schneider’s family to let them know he is safe.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued two guests of a Petersburg area fishing lodge Sunday from the shore of a remote bay after their skiff sank the day before.

The Coast Guard says it found the two in Totem Bay on the southern shore of Kupreanof Island, nearly 30 miles southwest of Petersburg, just after 11:00 a.m. on Sunday.

The two boaters were reported to have left Island Point Lodge the morning before in an 18-foot aluminum skiff. They were expected back by Saturday evening.

When they had not returned Sunday morning, fellow guests at the lodge contacted the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard sent a 29-foot response boat with a Seattle-based crew that’s deployed in Petersburg this year along with the cutter Elderberry and a Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Sitka.

The crew of the response boat located the two on shore at 11:13 a.m. and transported them to Petersburg. Both men were reported to be in stable condition. One had a minor hand injury.

Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department spokesman David Berg said local volunteers responded to meet the Coast Guard Sunday.

“These two had been out in this lodge’s boat and were fishing,” Berg said. “The boat capsized. They spent a couple hours in the water. Fortunately they were well dressed for weather with rain gear and not a lot other emergency equipment available with them. A lot of that went down with the boat. But they were able to get a small buoy and swim to shore and spent the evening, all night on the beach.”

Berg said the two used that buoy to get the attention of rescuers. They were not transported to the local medical center but returned to the lodge.

KFSK reached out to Island Point Lodge to try to contact the boaters, but the lodge declined to comment. Island Point is one of the sport fishing lodges on the Wrangell Narrows south of Petersburg, and guests use the lodge’s skiffs for halibut and salmon fishing in the area.

Howard Starbard knew he had a problem when the pumps couldn’t keep up with the water pouring into his 37-foot commercial fishing boat, Miss Amy.

The 63-year-old retired Alaska State Troopers commander couldn’t know he was about to spend 45 minutes in the sea, fighting to stay afloat before a relative, two good Samaritan vessels and the U.S. Coast Guard intervened to help him survive his boat’s sinking off the Southeast Alaska community of Pelican.

Starbard was power trolling for king salmon during a commercial opener Monday with his 13-year-old grandson and 35-year-old nephew about three miles off the west coast of Chichagof Island. It was the first day the Miss Amy had been out all summer.

Then the high-water alarm sounded.

Within three or four minutes, Starbard said Wednesday, he issued a Mayday call on the VHF radio. Then he told the others — grandson Timothy Drake II and nephew Chris Larsen — to haul up the fishing gear and powered the Miss Amy for the Cirus, a salmon tender some ways off toward shore.

“From that moment until I was released from the ER here in Sitka, the perception of time was distorted,” Starbard said by phone as he and family members waited for a flight home to Juneau.

Starbard, who at one point in his career served as administrative Alaska State Troopers commander based in Anchorage, retired as a major in 2006.

He’d never been on the receiving end of a rescue before.

U.S. Coast Guard watchstanders picked up the report that the Miss Amy was taking on water near Porcupine Rock and Lisianski Strait off Chichagof Island, the agency said. They issued an urgent marine broadcast, directed the launch of a helicopter and rerouted a cutter in that direction.

The Cirus and another vessel, the power troller Lucky Strike, responded to the broadcast, the Coast Guard said.

It was the Cirus that Starbard was making for as his boat took on water. Starbard sped up, dragging gear after the hydraulics to raise it went down, to get closer to the tender.

They came alongside. By then, the water was halfway up the engines and the boat was listing as it filled even faster, Starbard said.

His grandson jumped over to the tender first, with help from the Cirus crew as the churning water slammed the boats together. Then Larsen made the jump.

But at Starbard’s turn, he missed, and plunged into the frigid 6-foot seas.

Somebody threw a rescue ring but there was no footing on the boat’s stern. The crew and his family couldn’t pull him up. A ladder extended down was too high to climb out.

Starbard, growing exhausted and hypothermic, wrapped his arms around a rung and was pummeled by waves. There had been no time to put on survival gear, he said. His only mission had been to get his boat to the tender as fast as possible.

The other boat, the Lucky Strike, came alongside. Someone tossed a line into the water.

“At that point hypothermia was kind of getting to me. I was unable to really do anything,” Starbard said.

That’s when Larsen jumped into the water and got the line around his uncle so the Lucky Strike crew could hoist him aboard with an electric boat winch.

“I couldn’t keep my head up,” Starbard said, pausing a few times as he became emotional. “Chris swam with me. He kept my head up. He’s the hero.”

Fog and limited visibility prevented the vessels from leaving the area, the Coast Guard said. The survivors were hoisted into a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter and transferred to Sitka for medical care.

Just after 7 p.m., Amy Starbard got a call: The Coast Guard was receiving a distress signal from her husband’s boat. Her daughter got a similar call. Someone mentioned one person was unresponsive. She knew that wasn’t Larsen, an experienced deckhand. It was either her grandson or her husband.

She and her daughter boarded a flight to Sitka right away. She finally heard from Drake just before leaving.

“He said grandpa was going to the hospital,” Amy Starbard said Wednesday. “But that he was OK.”

Her husband was treated for hypothermia, tested, and released.

On Wednesday, Starbard was battered and bruised but thankful not only for his nephew’s help but the aid from the two Good Samaritan vessels that helped pull them all from the water.

“We’re all very very very grateful,” Amy Starbard said.

Howard Starbard doesn’t know what caused the boat to take on water. The Miss Amy sank in about 150 feet of water, carrying salmon as well as about 260 gallons of diesel and small amounts of motor and hydraulic oil — Starbard was careful to note the precise estimates.

The family on Wednesday was going over photos of a decade’s worth of memories and counting their emotional losses. Drake took his first steps aboard the boat. His PlayStation 5 was aboard when it sank.

Starbard’s Alaska State Troopers retirement badge was in there somewhere, too.

This story was originally published by the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

Update — July 13, 2022

Juneau police announced Wednesday that Lucas Schneider had been arrested on outstanding warrants and taken to Lemon Creek Correctional Center after contacting a police officer early in the morning.

Original story

A resident of Juneau’s Glory Hall has been reported missing. Lucas Schneider had been staying at the shelter for several months.

On June 22, he told Glory Hall staff he was going camping at Echo Cove. He doesn’t have a vehicle, and it was unclear how he would get there.

“We’re very worried about where Lucas might be,” Glory Hall Deputy Director Luke Vroman said.

Facebook posts about Schneider say he was due back a week later, but the Glory Hall didn’t have any information about a return date.

When Schneider had been gone for a week, Glory Hall staff reported him to Juneau police as a missing person. But Vroman said police did not take the report because it didn’t come from a family member.

So the Glory Hall contacted Schneider’s father, who filed a missing persons report with the police department on Tuesday.

But Lt. Krag Campbell said police waited to file a report because Schneider wasn’t expected to be anywhere.

“It would start to be kind of unusual if someone starts missing their due date back. But he didn’t have a due date that anybody was aware of, or at least that we have received information about,” Campbell said.

Schneider was expected at an appointment on Thursday. And when he missed that, the police filed a report. It’s unclear what the appointment was for or who was expecting to see him and where.

An information release about Schneider was issued on Friday.

Vroman said Schneider is roughly 5’9 and 200 pounds. He is white with short hair and is 43 years old.

It’s not known what Schneider was wearing when he left the Glory Hall.

On Friday, two arrest warrants were issued for Schneider. And an information release suggests that police think Schneider may still be camping north of Echo Cove.

Anyone with information about him can reach the Juneau Police Department at 907-586-0600 or make anonymous tips through Juneau Crime Line.

This story was updated on July 9 with additional information from the Juneau Police Department.

This story was updated on July 13 with the Juneau Police announcement that Schneider had been arrested.

Three crew members were safely rescued after their fishing boat sank underneath them about 50 miles northwest of Sitka on Monday.

The U.S. Coast Guard reports that the 37-foot power troller Miss Amy radioed for help after it began taking on water in the vicinity of Porcupine Rock, just offshore of the entrance to Lisianski Strait. The Coast Guard issued an urgent marine information broadcast asking for help from any vessels in the area.

Two good Samaritan boats — the Cirus and the Lucky Strike — responded and pulled the Miss Amy’s crew from the water. They were then hoisted aboard an Air Station Sitka helicopter and transported to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center for treatment.

In a news release, Petty Officer Matt Bitinas of the Coast Guard Juneau command center said the two crews that responded “saved three lives.”

The Miss Amy is reported to be on the bottom, in about 150 feet of water. The vessel is registered to an owner in Hoonah.

Sitka’s Search and Rescue team rescued an injured hiker on the evening of June 23 after he fell while hiking the Indian River Trail (Kaasda Héen).

According to Assistant Fire Chief David Johnson, 911 dispatchers received a call around 3:45 p.m. A fellow hiker made the 911 call and said they believed the man had broken his ankle.

Search and Rescue Captain Matthew Hunter said the hiker had been crossing the first bridge on the trail when the railing gave way and the hiker fell.

Hunter said ten volunteers and two fire hall staff responded to the call. They found the hiker around a mile and a half down the trail and brought him back to the trailhead on a rolling litter.

“The litter wheel is basically one big ATV tire that is underneath the center of the litter,” Hunter said. “So it allows us to go over anything from large rocks to boardwalk steps, if it makes a relatively cushy right in the litter and then allows us put most of the weight on that tire.”

Hunter said it took nine people carrying the litter around two-and-a-half hours to make it back to the trailhead. Still, the relatively flat trail made it a bit easier — rescues can be much more challenging on other hikes.

“If someone gets hurt on Gavin or Verstovia, it’s going to be hours and require more people, because it is exhausting work,” Hunter said. “Thankfully, we have a great crew, and working as a team we can do stuff that can’t be done individually, so it’s fulfilling to help someone and not just train.”

The rescue team made it back to the trailhead shortly after 7 p.m., where an ambulance met them to take the hiker to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center.