Life and Death

There's happiness and sadness imbedded in every day, naturally. When you are working with news stories day in, day out, there is always the story that pulls at your heart. Today’s tragic news that the body of James Kim of San Francisco was found after an extensive search in a riverbed in a ravine in a remote part of Oregon was one of the saddest of stories.
Missing Man Found Dead...

Kim and his wife and two very young children did almost the same things I did with my kids on Saturday, November 25. Both of our families had brunch in Portland, and then headed south on I-5, with a wary eye at the weather on the southern horizon. We both had to fight our way over a series of summits in central Oregon in the middle of driving snowstorms.

We stopped for dinner at different but similar roadside restaurants.

There, our paths diverged. I took my kids to a motel in Southern Oregon, and resumed our drive home to San Francisco the following day.

James Kim and his family, following a route westward off of the Interstate they'd seen on a map leading to the hotel they'd booked on the coast, inadvertently drove into disaster. The road is not maintained in winter, though they had no way of knowing that. Having been up in the same mountains that afternoon and night, I know that driving visibility was virtually non-existent, so it was probably quite a while before they realized that no one else was driving on their road.

You just couldn't see well enough to know who or what was or was not around you. My shoulders and neck were so sore that night after the tension of driving through the blizzards, I can well imagine how this other father was feeling as he struggled to navigate his way through the storm.

He eventually lost the route and turned down an even more remote road -- a logging road -- where they eventually became stuck.

They survived for nine days eating snacks, burning the car tires for heat, huddling together at night to ward off freezing temperatures. Kati Kim kept her young child and her infant alive by nursing them. By last Saturday, their food was gone and they had no further means to stay warm.

James Kim went off, searching for help. Two days later, a helicopter hired by relatives spotted Kati waving an umbrella coated with reflective tape, and the woman and children were saved.

An intensive search ensued for James. He left clothes and pieces of the map that had fatally led him astray as clues for rescuers who he knew would probably be trying to find him. He'd become hopelessly lost. His body was found 8 miles from where his car had been stuck.

***

Tonight, at my house and oblivious of this tragedy, my children are excited about the holidays. They drew pictures and created little "books," with brightly colored images. Their childish dreams include the magic of surprises, of a season of lights and family visits, fancy meals, and no school! What's not to love about Christmas if you're a kid?

I did what I always do on Wednesday nights -- cooked them a meal, helped with their homework, checked in about their days at school, got them ready for bed, and wished them good night.

***

All the while, I couldn't shake the melancholy image of James Kim, obviously a loving father and family man, struggling through unsurvivable conditions, trying desperately to find a way to save his family from the fate of starvation and freezing to death.

Sadly, if he'd only stayed with them, he too would have survived. Help was already on the way, though he had no way of knowing that. Instead, he died alone, apparently delirious from hypothermia, in a remote valley, no more than a day or so before the searchers following his clues caught up to him.

They got there just a little too late.

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