Girl, 12, Is Lone Plane Crash Survivor

Rescuers in a remote, mountainous region of Panama struggled Wednesday to evacuate a 12-year-old American girl, the only survivor of a small plane crash that killed a California businessman, his teenage daughter and their Panamanian pilot.

The bodies of Michael Klein, 37, Talia Klein, 13, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, were found Tuesday afternoon in an uninhabited region known as Las Ovejas, 270 miles west of the capital, Panama's civil protection agency said.

The family of Francesca Lewis - a friend of Talia's who was traveling with the Kleins - gathered at a soccer field near the crash scene awaiting a helicopter that will evacuate her.

Lewis, 12, survived the crash and was expected to be transported to a local hospital by this morning, Smith said.

She apparently was suffering from hypothermia and multiple traumas, including fractures in her arm, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Michael Klein, the chief executive officer of Pacificor LLC, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company that manages several hedge funds, founded two companies in the 1990s before becoming president and CEO of eGroups Inc., which was the world's largest group e-mail communication service. Yahoo Inc. purchased eGroups for $450 million in August 2000 and it is now known as Yahoo Groups.

A colleague described Michael Klein as a brilliant businessman who skipped high school and graduated from college at age 17.

"One of the most interesting people you could ever speak to on any ... in a myriad of subjects," Kurt Benjamin, the vice president of business development at Pacificor, told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. "He's just an unbelievable individual."

Rescuers were giving medical attention late Tuesday night to Lewis in a makeshift shelter, said Jose Henriquez, a prosecutor in the Chiriqui state capital of David who is handling the investigation.

The wreckage from the accident was in a hard-to-reach site on the slope of the Baru volcano, at an altitude of some 3,500 feet, the civil aviation authority said.

Aviation authorities said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but RPC radio reported that witnesses saw the plane flying at a very low altitude in strong winds around noon Sunday.

Klein was on vacation with the two girls at an eco-resort he owns in the Central American nation, according to Kim Klein, his ex-wife and Talia's mother. The three had been scheduled to return to Santa Barbara on Monday, she told the AP from Boquete, Panama.

Kim Klein traveled to Panama Monday morning and spoke with authorities about the possible whereabouts of the aircraft. She had offered $25,000 to anyone who could locate it.

Since Friday, Chiriqui has been lashed by storms and heavy rains, with fog and freezing temperatures, and the northern part of the province has had heavy flooding, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Klein, his daughter, and her friend left Santa Barbara on Thursday night to visit Klein's eco-resort on Islas Secas, with plans to return home in time for Christmas Eve, said Kurt Benjamin, a colleague of Klein's and vice president of Business Development for Pacificor in Santa Barbara, where Michael Klein was the chief investment officer.

Benjamin said the group was on its way to the city of David, where they were going to spend Sunday night at a coffee farm before flying back to Panama City and then home, reports the Times.