From the Wild Woods to the National Networks, Two Humboldt Girls Handle the Test

Two young Humboldt County girls braved both a cold and rainy 44 hours by themselves in the woods and the flurry of national media that began following them after they were miraculously found unhurt.

Leia Carrico, age 8, and her sister, Caroline, age 5, went missing Friday afternoon in the woods near their remote home which is six miles out a dirt road south of Benbow.

Friday afternoon, their mother, Misty Carrico said she had been putting together a trip to the garbage dump while wrangling her two year old, Wyatt. Travis Carrico was at work.

The girls, who were outside playing, wanted to go on a walk and Misty told them they needed to wait.

While their mom was occupied, the girls decided to go hiking without her. They were used to playing outside and they had a marker that they weren’t supposed to go past but, as Caroline, the youngest said, “Leia just wanted a little more adventure” so they headed down a deer trail.

Caroline said they wanted to find a sunny spot on the cloudy day.

Leia, the older sister, said that the adventure didn’t go as she had planned. “We had gone past our marker,” she said. “We tried to follow the same deer trail [as normal] but took a wrong turn.” Eventually they discovered they had walked past what they called the five mile marker twice and must have been walking in circles, Leia said.

Meanwhile, Misty, their mother noticed the two were no longer playing nearby. “I loaded up a couple of bags [of garbage] and I turned around and both my girls were gone.” She said she looked at her clock then and it was 2:39.

At first she said that she wasn’t too worried because the girls often explored. But eventually she began to get more and more concerned. She and two-year-old Wyatt began searching. “I started screaming their names and ringing a giant bell that they always come back to,” she said. “Wyatt and I hiked at least two and a half miles and the kids never came back.”

Misty said she felt “terrified” and guilt-stricken. At 3:30, she said she called “our closest neighbors and our aunts and uncles” to help search and to watch Wyatt while she searched.

About this time, the girls knew they were lost. “We kept on going up the mountain,” Leia said. “It was starting to drizzle so I knew we had to find shelter fast.”

Travis, the father, drove home from work after hearing the news. “I was almost two hours away at that time. The second I got home, I jumped on my motorcycle and started going everywhere I thought they would be….We contacted Search and Rescue and the Sheriff’s and they scrambled. So many people just dropped what they were doing and came to help.”

In the woods, the two girls tried to start a fire. Leia said they gathered sticks but then ended up wandering away. Volunteers searching later found the pile of mostly green sticks.

Diana Totten, a tracker and member of Southern Humboldt Technical Rescue, said the pile became a clue that helped narrow down the search area.

When it started to get dark, the two sisters found a tree branch that was low to the ground and huddled together sharing Caroline’s rain jacket. “Each of us had an armhole and we stuck our arms in it,” Leia explained. Then they snuggled up for warmth.

“Rain fell on Leia’s head,” Caroline said.

“My sister cried the whole night,” Leia said. “I told her to think happy thoughts of our family.”

But Caroline said under the circumstances, happy thoughts didn’t really help. She said she had been scared–especially of bears.

That night the temperature dropped into the 30’s. Caroline told us her hands got so cold they couldn’t close all the way and, as she spoke, she held up her tiny fingers curled about an inch from her palm.

Misty, who had been asked to stay at the house in case she was needed, was in what she called a very dark place. “I wasn’t hopeful at all after the first night and it being 38 degrees and raining…pouring…I constantly heard my kids screaming for help in my head.”

About two in the morning, she says, she went out with companions and went searching. “We climbed ravines and went over landslides.”

The next day, Saturday, Leia said they moved a little to a “nearby” area with huckleberry brush and they crawled back under it. “Dad told us when we got lost, we should stay in the same spot,” she explained. The girls sang nursery rhymes loudly, she said.

“We drank water off the huckleberry leaves,” Leia said. She said she didn’t get as much as Caroline. “My sister slurped all the water off,” she announced making a face.

Directed from the command center near the Benbow Inn, teams from multiple agencies, helicopters, and trained canines searched through Saturday.

Indeterminate tracks were discovered late Saturday out an unused dirt road with downed trees not far from the two sisters by their father and a group of his friends.

Both girls said at times through the days they could hear searchers hollering and they heard the helicopter and the two girls called back. But, Leia said, “They couldn’t hear us.”

Travis wrote in a comment on this site, “The problem was they were next to a very loud Creek and we cannot hear them yelling at us though they could hear us yelling at them. They said they heard people yelling at least five or eight times and yelled back but we just could not hear them. It tears me up to know I was Within yards of their location and just could not find them, which cost them another night out in the cold rain.”

By Saturday night, the girls had been without food for a day and a half. “We were pretty hungry,” Leia said. “Our bellies grumbled the whole night.”

They were also sore. Their father, Travis said, “As the crow flies, [the place they were found] was about a mile and a half away [from home]. As far as they walked, it was closer to about six miles away.”

Since Friday afternoon when the sisters went missing, two nights had passed. Travis hadn’t slept at all he said and Misty had only had two hours sleep.

Misty and a friend, Shanda Rial, a local business woman, talked about the area with the possible boot tracks that Travis and his friends had located.

Rial said told us she woke up early on Sunday, as heavy grey clouds smothered the morning sky knowing she needed to look in that area where the tracks had been seen. “I had to look,” she said. “I had to leave no stone unturned.” She reached out to a member of the Piercy Volunteer Fire Department, Delbert Chumley IV. “When I called him [Sunday] morning, he was just right there ready to go,” she said.

Chumley brought another Piercy VFD member, Abram Hill, and the three of them headed up the hill early and brush had overgrown the road. The three called out at intervals. Rial said she called, “Princess Leia, Princess Caroline, where are you?”

They traveled quite a ways slowly by quad, she said. “Then we found the footprint where the brush covered the road,” she explained, “that was what made the guys decide they weren’t going to stop.”

Rial headed back down the road and the two men continued. Chumley said, “Once we made it up to the end of the road, we just started hiking up…We were calling occasionally and we’d stop and listen. We heard some crackling in the brush…I thought we heard someone say, ‘Dad?'”

The girls called again and, suddenly hopeful, the two men covered their faces to protect themselves from the sharp branches of the huckleberry brush and started running. They came a slight gap. “I slid under and there were these purple rainboots,” Chumley said choking up.

Both girls were happy the rescuers had arrived but Caroline was a little weak, she told reporters later.

“When they found us, I felt so bad I couldn’t walk so they gave me a piggyback ride,” Caroline explained.

The two firefighters notified Diana Totten at the command post who notified the Sheriff’s Department where a crowd was gathered for a 10:30 a.m. press conference. Immediately, there was a sense among those gathered that something had happened, according to Mark McKenna.

We had been in contact with Misty Carrico who let us know soon after that the girls were possibly located. Then at 11:10 she wrote us, “They are found and alive.”

Lt. Mike Fridley of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office had been the liaison between his office and the family. “We put someone that they can reach out to,” he explained. “[Misty] has my personal cell phone.”

He was the one who would call to let Misty and Travis know their daughters had been located. The report made by Chumley and Hill had to be confirmed. “We have to have one of our team members put eyes on them,” he explained. “Then we can rejoice.”

When that had been done, he said, “”I had the honor of calling Misty.”

He explained that they had been in frequent contact. “She’s been calling me [for updates].” This time he called her.

“Misty, we got ’em,”  he said. “She started crying. First, she was screaming. Then she was crying.”

The Sheriff’s Department wanted to make sure the parents were with the kids as quickly as possible. They positioned them at the bottom of the road where the kids were found.

“I wanted Mom there waiting for them,” Fridley explained.

Meanwhile, Leia, Caroline and their rescuers hiked back to the quads. There they were given warm clothing and food. Then they were driven down to their parents who were waiting alongside Hwy 101 south of Bigfoot Burl.

Mark McKenna, our photographer, was there with the parents’ permission.

Leia, the eight-year-old was in the first vehicle and her father hungrily gathered her in his arms while he sobbed with joy.

Misty Carrico was the first to pull five-year-old Caroline into her arms where she held her as if the little one might crumble.

“I was so happy that I hugged Daddy and Mommy so tight,” Caroline said  at the interview later.

Then the four held each other in a family hug.

“I tried not to hurt ’em–squeezing ’em too tight,” Travis said.

The mood of everyone–law enforcement, search crews, family and friends–seemed ecstatic after the fear and doubt of the last few days.

“It’s a great ending,” Lt. Fridley told us later. “It don’t get any better than that.”

But, of course, that wasn’t the ending…It was the beginning of another scary adventure for two small country girls and their family.

Camera crews from all the major networks were eager to talk to the family.

On Monday, Misty and Travis agreed to one meeting with reporters. They said they wanted to thank all the people who had helped and they wanted to get the interviews over with all at once.

With Diana Totten’s and Estelle Fennell’s assistance coordinating the separate parties, the meeting was held at the historic Benbow Inn that afternoon.

While Leia seemed self-confident, Caroline was quiet at first going into the interview. But with the support of their parents, she joined in. She soon was answering questions in a room full of reporters and their camera crews.

The family thanked all the many people who supported them with everything from kind messages to searching the rugged, wooded hills of Southern Humboldt for days. Misty Carrico singled out the volunteers who work for free and Miranda 4-H where they said their kids learned the skills they needed to survive.

“We had instructed them on how to stay put,” she said, “and [the girls’ Outdoor Survival teacher from 4-H] taught them how to stay dry.”

Today, Tuesday, the family is hoping their lives go back to normal.

Notes if you would like to help:

• You can donate to the rescuers’ crew, by making checks out Piercy Volunteer Fire Department and sending them to P.O. Box 206, Piercy, Ca. 95587
• The Carrico family are raising money to repair theirs and their neighbors’ road after the road was badly damaged by hundreds of vehicles crossing it during wet weather. Click here if you would like to help.

Earlier Chapters:

• Ongoing Search and Rescue for Two Young Girls in the Twin Trees Area of Southern Humboldt
• Two Young Girls Lost in the Woods Overnight in Southern Humboldt While Their Family Worries
• Sheriff’s Department Releases More on the Missing Girls in Humboldt County
• FBI and Child Abduction Team Consulting in Case of Missing Girls
• Have You Seen Us? Public Asked to Share Flyer About Missing Girls
• Private Drone ‘Almost Caused a Serious Incident’ With Search Helicopter Looking for Leia and Caroline
• A Worried Community Eager to Find Missing Girls
• 44 Hours After Two Little Girls Went Missing, They’re in Their Parents’ Arms
• Hugs and Kisses (Leia and Caroline Carrico Back Home With Mom and Dad)
• Search and Rescue Teams Came From Far and wide