Tragic End To Search For Missing Dad

James Kim's Body Discovered 7 Miles From Where He Left Stranded Family To Seek Help

(CBS/AP)  A San Francisco man who got stranded in the snowy wilderness with his family nearly two weeks ago was found dead Wednesday in a mountain creek, authorities said.

James Kim's body was discovered about seven miles from his car in Oregon's snowy Klamath Mountains, two days after his wife and two daughters were rescued from the vehicle, stuck on a remote road. Kim had set out on foot over the weekend to find help.

Kim's body was at the foot of the Big Windy Creek drainage, a half-mile from the Rogue River, where ground crews and helicopters had been searching for days.

A tearful Undersheriff Brian Anderson announced the discovery of the body, his voice breaking at one point.

"He was very motivated," Anderson said. "We were having trouble in there. He traveled a long distance."

He said he had few details about Kim's condition or the immediate area where he was found.

The body was to be taken to the town of Central Point for an examination.

Earlier in the day, searchers said they had uncovered clues that suggested Kim had shed clothing and arranged it to give searchers clues to his whereabouts. They had also made plans to drop rescue packages with clothing, emergency gear and provisions.

Kim, 35, was a senior editor for the technology media company CNET Networks Inc. He and his family had been missing since Nov. 25. They were heading home to San Francisco after a family vacation in the Pacific Northwest.

Kim's wife, Kati, told officers that the couple made a wrong turn and became stuck in the snow. They used their car heater until they ran out of gas, then burned tires to stay warm and attract attention. With only a few jars of baby food and limited supplies, Kati Kim nursed her children.

Roads in the area are often not plowed in the winter and can become impassable.

Technology, some lucky text messages and an outdoorsman's intuition helped locate Kati Kim and her daughters.

Searchers rescued Kati Kim, 30, and her daughters Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, along a remote forest road Monday afternoon. The key to finding them, police said, was a "ping" from one of the family's cell phones that helped narrow down their location. Though cell phone signals are rare in the area, reports CBS News correspondent Blackstone, the family's phone connected briefly to a distant tower as it received a text message. That gave searchers a place to look.

According to one of two cell phone engineers who honed in on the Kims, the chance of the split-second signal making it through the rugged mountains was "very slim."

"It was just a hunch that we could help. And we followed up on the hunch," said Eric Fuqua, 39, an engineer for Edge Wireless LLC who contacted authorities to offer his services in the search. Edge Wireless provides cell phone coverage in southern Oregon, and is a member of Cingular Wireless' network.

Fuqua and co-worker Noah Pugsley started digging through computer records of cell phone traffic Saturday and learned that one of the Kims' cell phones had received two text messages around 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 26, the day after the family was last seen at a restaurant in Roseburg, Ore.

The engineers were able to trace a "ping" from the Kims' phone when it received the text messages. They located not only the cell tower in Glendale, Ore., from which the messages were relayed, but a specific area west of the town where the phone received them.

With the family's possible location narrowed down, the pair used computer software to create a map predicting what parts of the mountainous region received any cell phone coverage at all.

Fuqua then relied on his extensive experience traveling the heavily forested back roads as both a fisherman and a technician, he said, to guess the course the family may have taken as they headed from the mountains toward the coast.

The engineers' sleuthing led searchers to focus on Bear Camp Road.

Kati Kim and her daughters were found with their snowbound car just off that road, which Fuqua called "impossible" terrain to navigate for anyone with no knowledge of the area.

The complicated network of roads in the area is commonly used by whitewater rafters on the Rogue River or as summer shortcuts to Gold Beach — the Kims' destination when they went missing. The roads are not plowed in winter.

Searchers were lucky that the Kims received a cell phone signal at all in an area with "very, very sparse coverage," Fuqua said. "Every now and then, if you go slow enough, you'll hit our towers for just one second in that one spot," he said.

Details of the contents of the text messages and who sent them have not been released.

But law enforcement officials said the engineers' analysis of the messages was the critical breakthrough that searchers needed to ultimately spot three of the Kims by helicopter as Kati Kim waved an umbrella marked "SOS."

"From what I understand about (Fuqua's) help in this case, as far as I'm concerned he's a hero to me," said Inspector Angela Martin, who led the San Francisco police's investigation into the Kim's disappearance.

[juranply]

R.I.P. James Kim, in my eyes, you are truely a heroic husband and a father. And to Kati Kim, my heartfelt prayer goes out to you. You are blessed to have such a fine and caring man as your husband and James was blessed to have such a loving and caring wife as you. Please accept my deepest condelences on the loss of James.

[juranply]

To: newster1
You use other people's tragic loss as comparisons to bring across your point. Cleary, your example has made it to a place where it has no place for as such. If you are going to *** about every story being covered by cbs news, *** to the editors. This family is in mourning, I'm sure they could use some prayers and not your insensitive and uncalled for remarks.

Your remark about the definition of a hero, it is not the time and place to be arguing about what your little brain thinks what defines a hero and your remark from previous posting:

The balloons, stuffed animals, cards and flowers outside the Kim's house will be swept up and removed, the wife will get life insurance money from his workplace, and move onward and forward.
The two kids will someday look back at photos of a stranger they won't really remember and didn't really know and move on as well.
Time to file this away as closed.

Totally tasteless.

I'm sure that when you yourself die one day, since you are a person of very little regards to other people, your family will remember you for a few moments and they will move on as well.

If you don't get my point, you are even a bigger freak than i initially had estimated.

[ike50]

I will miss James

[nothappyatall]

The reason THIS case made the national media like it did and not the homeless guy who freezes to death in a public park, is THIS case is high suspense and drama like a James Bond movie, people tune in for the drama to these stories like they do movies and tv shows and THAT is why the media dogs these kinds of incidents like they do- ratings, web site hits, advertising dollars and drawing the most viewers by having the most complete coverage, interviews, photos and dramatic video clips.

The home guy in the park who freezes to death is a non-news story because he is alone, has no money or fame, and there's no action or drama or suspense in a story about a 60 year old man who froze to death in the park.
But the guy who gets LOST on a drive and then battles the cold and snow is drama, it captures the media and they pull the heart strings as hard as they can for the ratings. IM not the one who needs help- I point out the media bias, the media motives and both the public and church's hypocracy in the issues they claim they "care" about- the very ones that just happen to make the mass media like this case while thousands of similar ones make page 5 of the local news and homeless people still freeze to death on the streets.

[nothappyatall]

mcashel1; Just LOOK at the media and you see what I'm saying is true

CPSC reports there are about 280 drowning deaths of children younger than 5 each year in swimming pools.
www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06164.html

How many of those 280 have YOU seen on national news? one? two? if you lived near one of them it made your local news thats about it.

Fatal Injuries to Children -US 1986

Motor vehicle crashes accounted for almost half of the 22,411 fatal injuries among children in the US
Among children aged 5-9 years, pedestrian injuries were associated with more deaths (502 (24%) of 2133) than any other cause of injury

Each year, injuries account for 20% of all hospitalizations among U.S. children, nearly 16 million emergency room visits, and permanent disability to more than 30,000 children

http://iier.isciii.es/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001658.htm

How many of THESE have made national news? how many of THESE did we all hear about for days on end? How many of you donated cash to those 30,000 permanently disabled children or even read about them?
Yet people, you here and the media dwell on ONE case like this one in Oregon for days, weeks and longer. I'll bet someone will erect a marker or memorial out there too.

[mcashel]

By the way, James Kim died alone - not with a lot of other people and he's getting media coverage because people care.

[mcashel]

newster, you are very angry inside about something. The fact that you have to come on here and start discussing your religious beliefs is showing you have issues with yourself. There is a family in mourning and you don't need to be discussing all the other nonsense your saying that no one else believes! Sorry - get some help.

[nothappyatall]

The media show us that the one person dying in a car wreck or house fire, or the homeless bum who freezes to death in a public park in the night is worth a lot less than the people who die collectively as a group in a larger event , and the sheeple who read and react to the news stories prove that by THEIR actions, or lack thereof...

You don't read the news about a big donation of money to house the homeless after one dies in the park frozen, but you sure read about it when 100 die in a disco fire- a million dollar worth of donations for a memorial, or the surviving family fund.

[nothappyatall]

That is exactly what I am pointing out cagetherage- the media controls WHICH deaths get the primetime full coverage, numbers on the screen to call to DONATE cash etc., the guy who falls asleep at the wheel and drives off a cliff and dies gets a 2" by 2" blurb on page 5, a few "oh what a shame. poor guy!" comments and he's forgotten by the next day. But the same guy dies with 100 others in a disco FIRE and suddenly he become valuable real estate! well we need a MEMORIAL now they say, we need to take care of his FAMILY in this tragedy, the Red Cross is on the scene handing out cash, the satelite trucks from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN are all there, it's on the news for WEEKS and in magazines and newspapers, money pours in from around the globe to a "surviving family fund" to help pay for college for the guy's kids and the mortage for his widowed wife.

See the hypocracy there?

[nothappyatall]

There is no god, if there were this stuff wouldn't happen in the first place, this and the 200,000 + dead from a tsunami not long ago help prove there's no god.
The "lord" will not bless or have "mercy" on anyone, and asking this fictional entity to "bless" someone is a total waste of time you may as well talk to a brick wall.

My observation is, unless you die with a whole bunch of OTHER people in a train, car, plane accident, fire- you are relegated to page 5 as a sidline news story next to the Ad for the Macy's clothing sale and forgotten. Die with a whole bunch of other people all at once and you get all kinds of memorials coming out the wazoo, your family gets all kinds of cash, gifts, donations, media coverage, sympathy letters from around the globe, maybe even a call from the White House and all that.
Maybe you all don't see the hypocracy there, I DO.

[aeasus]

In Memoriam: James Kim

http://news.com.com/2009-12-6141617.html?tag=cnetfd.ld1

May the Lord bless the Kim family in their time of sorrow.

[linfinster]

What a tragic thing to read about. That kind of thing does happen every day in some form or another, but one can't compare, let's say Darfur horrors or even 911 to this .. those attrocities are planned by man, this story is an example of, not human stupidity newster1, but the many facets of human behavior. This man was torn between staying to protect his family or try to get them help. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight. Not everything is apparent when you're going through a tough time. Don't blame him for that. Tsk Tsk.
Politics and the media (one in the same if you ask me) keep us engrossed in these thing to distract us from what they're doing behind closed doors. We used to be outraged at the gas prices, the media was all over that ... now? Nothing much .. lulled, distracted, how long will Darfur continue? The US wont do much, no oil there ... nothing to gain ..

[txgs33]

May the Lord bless the Kim family and keep them close through this tragick time and always. James embodies the characteristics that all men aspire to be: Brave, selfless ,forever the protector of one's family even if it means the end of his time and filled with.....LOVE!

[cagetherage1]

I retract my last post. I just read some other posts by newster and realized that I just made a big mistake in trying to defend newster.

[cagetherage1]

I believe what newster seems to be trying to say is that the newsworthyness of a story is controlled by the media and its editors more then many of us care to realize. It is not so much about what the story is about but more about what kind of attention/exposure the media outlet will get as a result of the story that they are carrying. More attention/exposure means more attention/exposure for the advertisers.

[mdc76082]

newster1 -

You're an idiot.

[sharncedar]

The mountains take people now and then, you can't blame the poor victims. The land has spirits, both dark and light. In that area, the dark spirits are the winter spirits, they take people now and then in the snow or by starvation. That's the nature of that place. I've been close to death before in mountains near there, it's a pretty weird feeling, in the snow miles from civilization, daeth like a white blanket all around. A feeling I can hardly stand to remember now, there is much more to this earth than silly city people imagine.

[nothappyatall]

This kind of story happens in one form or another every hour in this country, a death, family left behind, most hardly make page 5 in the newspaper except maybe locally. Shifting the focus back to 9/11 here's a thought provoker for you;

How come the victims of 9/11 get all these memorials, press coverage, their surviving familes made instant millionaires with cash payouts, donations, councelling, help, assistance and all the rest, when OTHER people in similar situations (but ALSO dead with surviving families) basically get SQUAT?

EXPLAIN that one!

[a8m3h]

GOD HAVE MERCY ON HIS SOUL, AND ON HIS FAMILY...
SOME OF YOU HEARTLESS PEOPLE SHOULD FIND SOMEPLACE ELSE TO VENT OUT.... WE DON'T NEED YOUR KIND OF REMARKS.

[oleander8]

To: FARTKNOCKER2 "Now a days most want take the time or want to get paid. "

I must strongly disagree with you. Americans are notoriously generous in times of need - as evidenced by the outpouring of volunteers and funds during 9/11, Katrina, and the tsunami to name just a few such times.