Autistic teen still missing in W.Va.

Family, rescuers worry that 3 days have now gone by

By Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

LANEVILLE, W.Va. — Hundreds of people searching for an autistic teenager lost in the woods of West Virginia tried to keep their spirits up yesterday as a third full day passed with little sign of 18-year-old Jacob Allen.

Mr. Allen, of Morgantown, wandered away from his parents during a Sunday afternoon hike in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. He cannot communicate verbally and has the mental capacity of a 3- or 4-year-old child.

“Every minute that passes is harder and harder,” said his 22-year-old sister, Brittany. “I just feel like I’m sitting there waiting for the phone to ring.”

Time is critical because “the odds of a successful rescue go down significantly after 72 hours,” said Greg Davenport, of Stevenson, Wash., who has written six books on survival. That deadline lapsed yesterday afternoon.

Factors in his survival, said Mr. Davenport, include how much he’s moving, how many calories he’d eaten before he wandered away and whether he’s able to shelter himself. Mr. Allen was without food or water when he disappeared and was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, windbreaker and wind pants.

Project Lifesaver

The story of the missing autistic teen in West Virginia has focused attention on a tracking device made especially for people with special needs that can help locate them if they are missing.

Although 18-year-old Jacob Allen was not wearing the Project Lifesaver bracelet — a battery-operated radio wrist transmitter — when he disappeared in the Monongahela National Forest on Sunday, disability advocates say it could have aided in his rescue.

People who are part of the program wear a personalized bracelet that emits a tracking signal. Search and rescue teams have been trained to locate people wearing these bracelets. In fact, search times have been reduced from hours to minutes.

It is especially helpful for people with autism, Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.

The electronic tracking program, part of Operation: Take Me Home, is in 41 states and Canada. Pennsylvania has 15 agencies that have adopted this program. The bracelets cost about $300.

In the Pittsburgh area, Project Lifesaver is coordinated by Cynthia Garfold, executive director of the Western Pennsylvania Search and Rescue.

You can find out more information or enroll at the program at www.wpsardc.org or call 412-371-HELP (4357).

Those associated with the search remained optimistic yesterday, expressing relief that the search area has received no rain and that temperatures last night were forecast to stay above 50 degrees.

“Clearly the time that has passed is a concern,” said Sandy Green, chief of the Canaan Valley Fire Department. “We still have a very high confidence level in bringing this to the conclusion we desperately want.”

Rescue dogs picked up some scents of Mr. Allen during an overnight search on Tuesday night, and searchers yesterday focused in on those areas. Volunteers also used horses and all-terrain vehicles yesterday as they expanded the 10-square-mile search area and combed over areas that had been searched before.

They also are working with retail outfitter L.L. Bean to try to match several footprints to the boots Mr. Allen is wearing.

“We are not any less optimistic than we were two days ago,” said Don Scelza, coordinator for Appalachian Search and Rescue.

Mr. Scelza said he has rescued people who have been missing as long as eight days.

Though the weather has held, rescuers are still battling numerous challenges.

Because Mr. Allen cannot respond verbally, searchers are forming tight grids in hopes of spotting him, and yelling enticing phrases, such as “We have ice cream” or “We have candy bars” and then waiting in place for him to come to them.

Brittany Allen guesses that her brother is now cold, scared, hungry and confused. “He constantly needs supervision,” she said. “He needs us to be there for him.”

“That is our biggest concern,” said Ms. Allen, who flew down to West Virginia from graduate school in Boston. “If someone calls, he can’t say, ‘I’m here. Help me.’ ”

Searchers are also contending with the terrain made up of rocky crevices, steep mountain walls and dense brush.

It is probably the roughest patch of the whole Monongahela National Forest, said Jeff Hammes, a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. “If you had to pick the worst place to get lost and conduct a search, this would be it.”

The dense foliage has also rendered infrared helicopter search technology useless.

In addition to his lack of verbal skills, Mr. Allen’s autism poses other problems for rescuers.

While there’s been a significant amount of research over the last decade on the behavior of Alzheimer’s patients when they are lost, research into similar questions for autistic people is just in its infancy, said Mr. Scelza, who lives in Valencia and works as a technology consultant.

Mr. Scelza said that he has seen several unpublished studies on autism to help with the search for Mr. Allen, but that it is difficult to predict his thought process.

Cindy Waeltermann, director of the Autism Center of Pittsburgh, said Mr. Allen has little understanding of danger and likely cannot understand he’s cold and hungry. Instead, he’s likely becoming distraught with little clue of how to improve his situation, she said.

Ms. Waeltermann also noted that his disappearance could have been resolved with a Project Lifesaver bracelet, which provides a beacon signal to identify a person’s location. Such bracelets, which cost $300, have helped locate many people with autism and Alzheimers, she said, usually within an hour of their disappearance.

Mr. Allen’s parents, Jim and Karen, have not talked to the news media. But Mr. Allen’s 14-year-old brother, Micah, said he hopes that his brother would think to drink from creeks or streams. “He loves water,” he said.

Micah Allen, a freshman at Morgantown High School, would often take his brother hiking, which “let him get some exercise and be free,” he said. Jacob Allen would often walk fast ahead of his brother, stopping and sitting down every so often to let Micah catch up.

Though Mr. Allen had wandered off on hikes before, the family always found him immediately, said Brittany Allen.

Still, the incidents were scary. “In 18 years, this has always been our biggest fear, and it finally happened,” she said.

Jacob Allen is extremely friendly, said his sister, sometimes walking up to people that he knows and touching their faces.

During weekdays, he attends the special education program at Morgantown High School and at night he works with individualized trainers who give him therapy and take him on outings.

Robert DeSantis, the principal at Morgantown High School, said that students there on Tuesday held a fund drive to help buy supplies for the searchers.

“Within a couple of hours, the students collected $1,000 out of their pockets,” he said.

He said that a couple of students who had survival training have been excused from school to participate in the search.

At least 300 volunteers responded to requests yesterday to be there for Jacob Allen. Eager to help search, they lined up in predawn darkness at the staging area at the Canaan Valley Ski Lodge, piling into buses to be out in the search area by first light.

Mr. Green, the local fire chief, said that he was “moved” by the number of volunteers willing to take time out of their lives to help with the search. The 300-person effort is 98 percent volunteer, said incident command spokesman Chris Stadelman, and additional volunteers are welcome to show up at the ski lodge.

As more volunteers trickled into the ski lodge throughout the day, they were put to work.

Grace Harris showed up around 1 p.m. without proper hiking gear and with only a few hours to spare before she and her husband had to go back to their home in Texas. Ms. Harris, who happened to be staying at a nearby hotel while her husband did work in the area, lost her 17-year-old son seven years ago to a fatal boating accident.

She helped out yesterday refilling trays of fruit put out by the Red Cross, part of a spread for volunteers that included dog biscuits in addition to human nourishment. In hindsight, said Ms. Harris, the support of volunteers during the three-day search for her own son was invaluable.

“I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that’s what helps you keep going,” she said. “I just couldn’t keep sitting in that hotel room.”

First published on October 18, 2007 at 12:00 am
Anya Sostek asostek@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1308. Link to original post