Search & Rescue

Last year, five people went missing in Juneau — more than in any year since 2016, according to data from Juneau police.

And some families said they had a hard time figuring out when to rely on law enforcement agencies for help or when it was time to step in and search for themselves. 

When Kiersten Farnsworth’s little brother Doug Farnsworth went dark on social media last fall, she said she knew immediately that something was wrong. 

But she lives in Arizona, so she had to call attention to the case from several states away.  

She emailed Juneau police multiple times to post on their Facebook page that he was missing. In her third email, on Oct. 1, she wrote, “I beg JPD to post a missing person on Facebook.” 

After the third email, the police department posted that he was missing on its Facebook page and assigned a detective to the case. 

“If you don’t know how to verbalize and call and be aggressive like that, then it’s really easy to be overlooked or not informed,” Farnsworth said.

After that, Doug’s aunt, Anna LaRue, found the truck he was driving in a wooded area near town. Then there was a coordinated search with the Coast Guard, Alaska State Troopers, Juneau Police and the local search dog group SEADOGS.

But they didn’t find him. 

Those searches didn’t happen until a few days after Farnsworth reported her brother missing. And Marcy Larson with SEADOGS said that they should be contacted within 48 hours for the dogs to be able to pick up a scent. After that, it’s harder to track. 

Farnsworth says time is of the essence, and she wishes her brother’s missing person case had been acted on right away.

“You have to immediately get smells, immediately get videotapes, immediately get everything, because tapes get lost, things get recorded over and smells go away.”

‘Without Facebook, we wouldn’t have anything going for us’

After the active search was called off, Farnsworth said it fell to her to keep the search going. 

She went knocking on doors, asked people for security camera footage, reached out to her tribe Tlingit and Haida and organized a vigil for him. 

And she created a Facebook group specifically to help find her brother. It was a place for people to share where they have searched and to organize search parties for him. 

She came up to Juneau to search for him at first, but eventually had to go back to Arizona, so Facebook was crucial for her to keep people searching for him. 

“Without the community and without Facebook, we wouldn’t have anything going for us,” Farnsworth said.

After her brother was found, Farnsworth converted the Facebook group she created to help find other missing people in Juneau.

Last year, Facebook played a big role in community efforts to find missing people, especially for families that don’t live in Juneau.

Preston Nelson’s grandmother Geraldine Nelson was the first person to go missing last year. He said his family used Juneau Community Collective — a large community Facebook group — to ask for help finding her. 

After the search for his grandmother was over, Preston Nelson started asking questions about how people find out about missing people in Juneau.  

‘Why did they give up?’

When he thought about the other missing persons cases last year, Preston Nelson thought the amount of effort to find each person was different. 

“One thing [that] has been bothering me about all these people that go missing is, they gave up after a couple of days,” Nelson said. “And the question I’ve been asking myself for a few weeks now is, ‘Why did they spend five days looking for my grandmother?’ They searched multiple different spots the first few days but they kept searching.” 

He said he didn’t see that same kind of effort from law enforcement on other missing person’s cases in Juneau. 

“Why did they give up on these other cases?” he said.

The answers to those questions — about who gets searched for and when — are complicated. 

Alaska State Troopers are mandated by state law to lead search and rescue efforts in the state. 

But each search is different, and there isn’t a standard length of time that they’ll spend looking for someone. 

In a written statement, Trooper Search and Rescue Coordinator Lt. Paul Fussey said they factor in things like weather, geography, what kind of gear they have and the experience of the searchers themselves to decide when and how to search for someone who is missing. 

He wrote that they also rely on the guidance of local search-and-rescue partners when making decisions about searches. 

In Juneau, those organizations are SEADOGS and Juneau Mountain Rescue. Both organizations said they rely on the Troopers to make a decision on when to actively search for someone. 

And when that active search is over and a person isn’t found, Troopers turn the case over to Juneau police. 

Juneau police Lt. Krag Campbell said local police don’t help with ground searches in the woods because they aren’t trained for that kind of search and rescue.

But he said they will search for missing people in neighborhoods and do other investigative things, like looking at phone records and interviewing people. 

Juneau police will also post a missing person on its Facebook page, but usually not right away. 

“So there’s kind of a balance that we put in there to try to make some reasonable attempts to locate the person first,” Campbell said.

Campbell said if police aren’t able to find the person, then they will post to social media and ask people with any information about the missing person to call the police. If they don’t get any hits from that, then they will put out a press release. 

Searching falls to friends and family

While police will investigate a missing persons case, Campbell said they don’t organize search parties.

That means some of the searching falls on family and friends. Campbell said he doesn’t know of any resources to help with that. 

“If there was a group, like maybe a nonprofit group that was through donations and community volunteers, that would step in and help with searches and organizing… That might be something that’s very beneficial,” Campbell said. 

After her experience trying to get help finding her brother, Farnsworth said there needs to be more resources for family and friends of a missing person. 

She said she wants police to include resources in the packet people fill out when they report that a person is missing.  

But she also thinks there could be a separate guide for friends and family when someone goes missing in Juneau. 

“And then maybe possibly start offering a support group at this point,” Farnsworth said. “Because there’s a lot of people missing there for how small we are.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information about the person who found Doug Farnsworth’s truck when he disappeared. 

Searchers found New Stuyahok resident Andrew Wyagon alive last week, more than 18 hours after he was reported missing, said Alaska State Troopers.

Wyagon, 68, had left Dillingham on his snowmachine Wednesday morning, headed for New Stuyahok, a village roughly 50 miles away. But he didn’t arrive. He was reported overdue Wednesday evening.

Searchers couldn’t find him that night, according to troopers.

At daylight Thursday, the search resumed, said Frank Woods, coordinator for Dillingham Search and Rescue. He said a team of volunteers on snowmachines came across Wyagon’s trail. In less than three hours, they found him.

“Followed that until we came across him and his snowmachine in the river,” Woods said.

Wyagon was about 40 miles from Dillingham, about five miles from Portage Creek on the west side of the Nushagak River.

“It was really miserable conditions yesterday — foggy and really hard to see,” Woods said. “The rivers and the creeks had filled up with water. So it looked like he had tried to cross a flowing creek and his snowmachine submerged.”

Fortunately, he said, Wyagon was well prepared.

“He saved everything on the snowmachine, and went up, built a fire, dried off his clothes and changed into dry clothes,” Woods said. “Amazingly, he had a space blanket that helped keep all the chill off all night. Sitting in space blankets works wonders.”

He said Wyagon appeared to be in good condition and they took him to Dillingham. They also pulled his snowmachine out of the water and towed it back to town.

Woods said they were able to find him today because of a break in the snow.

“Like now would have been impossible, and last night it would have been impossible cause the tracks we were following were just etchings in the crust,” Woods said.

Woods said the search was a joint effort between volunteers in Dillingham, New Stuyahok and Ekwok, as well as the troopers, who looked for Wyagon by plane.

Looking back on the local issues we covered this year, a disturbing trend emerged. We reported on several members of our community who went missing. While it’s not clear that more people went missing in Juneau in 2021 than in other years, at KTOO we definitely gave the topic our attention. Instead of waiting for police reports about missing persons, we started turning to social media where family members were organizing searches for loved ones who stayed away from home too long.

In May, an elder named Geraldine Nelson went missing in Lemon Creek. After an extensive search, largely coordinated by volunteers, Nelson’s body was found. Her story forced KTOO and the community at large to scrutinize the Silver Alert system designed to help find vulnerable adults who go missing. 

In August, Joe Clayton was visiting family in Juneau from Oregon and didn’t return from a hike. Some of his belongings were later found in a wooded area near the University of Alaska Southeast and his family offered a $5,000 reward for information about him. In October, human remains were found near the ferry terminal that Juneau police confirmed were Clayton’s. 

Overlapping with Joe Clayton’s disappearance was the search for Doug Farnsworth, who was last seen driving a truck that was found abandoned near the Perseverance Trailhead. An extensive search involving dogs and a Coast Guard helicopter were unsuccessful. Farnsworth’s sister told KTOO in October that law enforcement officials told her that “they don’t look for people that don’t want to be found.” A hiker with a dog found Farnsworth’s remains in November, not far off the popular Flume Trail.

Clifford White has been missing since October. His family said he wasn’t the same after his mom died of COVID-19 late last year. He’s a local MMA fighter. People describe him as being in good shape. He’s 29 years old and Alaska Native. He has short black hair and his father says he has a goatee and mustache right now. He’s about 5 feet 11 inches tall and has tattoos.

And just this month, authorities identified human remains found two years ago as James Christopher Cole, who had been missing since 2017 when a skiff he was riding in capsized near Aurora Harbor. Three people and a dog made it safely to shore but Cole and another man, Sheridan Scott Stringer were lost.

KTOO is looking back at 2021 through the stories that had the widest and strongest impact on the community. Read about the pandemic’s second year in Juneau.

Authorities have identified human remains found nearly two years ago on a downtown Juneau seawalk near the state Department of Labor building as one of two missing men thought to have drowned four years ago.

On Thursday, the state’s crime lab said they belong to James Christopher Cole. 

Cole has been missing since 2017 when a skiff he was riding in capsized near Aurora Harbor. Three people and a dog made it safely to shore but Cole and another man, Sheridan Scott Stringer were never found. 

Cole was 50 years old at the time that he disappeared. He and others in the boat were headed to the Lumberman, a derelict tugboat that was anchored in Gastineau Channel. That boat was used as a liveaboard for years. 

Nine months before he disappeared, Cole was one of about 50 tenants displaced from the Bergmann Hotel after it was condemned by the City and Borough of Juneau over health and safety hazards. Cole told KTOO at the time that he wasn’t sure where to go. 

Juneau police Lt. Krag Campbell said Friday that authorities are in touch with Cole’s next of kin who will decide what to do with his remains. Until then, his body will remain at the state medical examiner’s office. 

Correction: Cole’s remains were found nearly two years ago in January 2020. 

Update — Sunday, Dec. 5:

Alaska State Troopers said they located the body of Luki Akelkok, ending a multi-day search for the 28-year-old Dillingham man that was hindered by bad weather.

Aklelkok’s family and the boat’s owner were in Whittier Saturday to retrieve the vessel that capsized Wednesday, leaving 28-year-old Anchorage man Stefan Weingarth dead and Akelkok missing. The two men had been returning to Whittier from a hunt on Esther Island.

Around noon, they found the boat about nine miles northeast of Whittier, an updated trooper statement said. Thirty minutes later and about 200 yards from the vessel, they found Akelkok’s remains in two feet of water.

Akelkok was not wearing a personal flotation device when he was found, according to the statement. Troopers said his body had drifted about five miles before coming to rest.

His body was transported to the State Medical Examiner Office in Anchorage.

Original story — Saturday, Dec. 4:

A Dillingham man is still missing after his boat sank off the coast of Whittier on Wednesday, leaving his passenger dead.

Twenty-eight-year-old Luki Akelkok, of Dillingham, has been listed as a missing person, according to Tim DeSpain with the state’s Department of Public Safety. He said the U.S. Coast Guard suspended their search and rescue efforts Thursday at 10 p.m. amid difficult weather conditions, but they’ll continue their search when weather improves.

Akelkok has been missing since Wednesday. Troopers said he and 28-year old Stefan Weingarth, of Anchorage, were on their way back to Whittier after a deer hunt on Esther Island when they came across bad weather.

Troopers said the men were part of a group of four hunters returning on two boats Wednesday afternoon. One of the boats arrived in Whittier around 3:30 Wednesday.

Almost two-and-a-half hours later, Weingarth — the passenger in the 20-foot aluminum Lund skiff — called the other boat to report that their bow was underwater and he and Akelkok were sinking. The boat had four deer and two seals on board, according to troopers.

The trooper statement said witnesses reported “seas of 6 feet with whitecaps on top of the waves, winds blowing 40 knots, and dark skies.”

Coast Guard from Juneau and Anchorage were contacted and coordinated response with vessels from Valdez.

But their response was delayed due to bad weather. Around 10 that night, the Coast Guard found Weingarth dead in a life jacket about five miles northeast of Whittier. The Coast Guard also found the missing vessel.

DeSpain said the search for Akelkok have been hindered by windy conditions and heavy freezing spray. But he said searching will continue as weather improves.

DeSpain did not have an update on the search Saturday morning.

A U.S. Coast Guard crew from Air Station Sitka rescued four people after their boat began taking on water late on Nov. 10.

According to a Coast Guard press release, watchstanders in Juneau received a call over VHF radio shortly before 11 p.m. from the crew of the fishing boat Julia Breeze. The group of four reported the 53-foot boat was taking on water, and they were abandoning ship about 13 miles west of Cape Ommaney.

Less than an hour later, the Sitka helicopter crew was on the scene. They found all four survivors in a raft, wearing survival suits.

The crew hoisted the group from the water and brought them back to Sitka, where they were met by EMS first responders.

According to the release, all four survivors were in stable condition. The cause of the incident is under investigation.