Oregon authorities find note left near Kim

By Lara Moscrip, Jenna Lane and Brent Begin, Bay City News Service

December 7, 2006

The Oregon authorities who searched by air, foot and raft for missing San Francisco man James Kim said they recovered a note left on a road they searched during the process of finding Kim's body this afternoon.

According to Josephine County, Ore. Undersheriff Brian Anderson, there was "an SOS, an 8 1/2-by-11 inch SOS" on a road traveled during the search.

An Oregon state medical examiner will perform the autopsy on Kim's body this evening and information is planned for release Thursday, according to Anderson.

According to Anderson, Kim's body was found "about a half-mile from where he started," close to the Kim family's car.

Robert Graham led the Eugene, Ore. mountain rescue team and reported the difficulty of navigating the terrain.

"It's very rough ... just spending one day out here is exhausting," Graham said. He added that one positive outcome of the search is the fact that James Kim's body was recovered.

"Just the resolution that he was found is good for everyone, I believe," Graham said.

He also noted how difficult it was for searchers to make progress in the search for Kim.

"An hour of hiking was exhausting. There's a lot of cliffs to climb, a lot of fallen timber ... I'm amazed, we spent hours down there and we made very little distance," Graham said.

A swift water rescue team led by Joe Hyatt swam and waded through water in Big Windy Creek, not far from the creek bed where Kim was found.

Members of the team were in an area that had been identified by heat sensors as a "heat point" and entered the creek with special dry suits.

Hyatt also noted the difficulty of searching in the difficult circumstances.

"It's very deceiving. When you're up in the mountains, it's nice and peaceful, but in creek drainages, we dropped about 800 vertical feet in about 500 meters," Hyatt said.

Kim's body was found shortly after noon yesterday within a half mile of the Rogue River, approximately five miles down the Big Windy Creek drainage area where search and rescue crews had concentrated their efforts, Anderson said.

Kim's wife and two young daughters were found in their stranded car on Monday. Kim had left them to find help on Saturday, one week after they went missing.

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