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Close to 200 people search for Victoria hiker missing near Sooke
Times Colonist17 December 2022Louise DicksonJDF SAR era
Louise Dickson. “Close to 200 people search for Victoria hiker missing near Sooke”, Times Colonist, 17 December 2022 ref-only
Read this article on the Times Colonist site ↗
Summary
Search-and-rescue teams from Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland intensified efforts to locate missing Victoria woman Melissa McDevitt. Paul Berry, president of Comox Valley Search and Rescue, said 170 professional search volunteers, including dog teams, were on the ground Saturday looking for McDevitt and would continue Sunday. McDevitt, 38, was scheduled to travel to Vancouver Dec. 10 for a flight to North Carolina; her grey Subaru Forester was found in the Charters Creek fish hatchery parking lot in Sooke that same day. Surveillance video from Dec. 9 shows her carrying hiking poles; a powerful windstorm hit Vancouver Island that night. Berry: "We anticipate it will be a recovery operation, given the time that has elapsed." He also said locating McDevitt would require "looking under every leaf, every tree branch, behind every fallen log." The search was subsequently suspended, Sooke RCMP said Monday. Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue is not named in this article.
Details
| Headline | “Close to 200 people search for Victoria hiker missing near Sooke” |
|---|---|
| Publication | Times Colonist |
| Date | 17 December 2022 |
| Page | Not applicable — web edition, no print page number |
| Byline | Louise Dickson |
| Era | JDF SAR era |
| Document type | news report |
| Original article | Times Colonist — the article on the publisher's own site ↗ |
| Source | timescolonist.com |
| Accessed | 2026-08-04 |
| Licensing | ref-only |
| Record confidence | confirmed |
Archivist's note
The article focuses on Comox Valley SAR as the lead team and does not name Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue, though the search area (Charters Creek fish hatchery, Sooke) is within JDF SAR's primary response zone. The Dec. 13 print records already in the archive cover the earlier phase of this search; this web article covers the large Dec. 17 mobilization. The incident is already in the archive as inc-2022-12-09-mcdevitt-charters-creek. Ingested as contextual coverage of a significant multi-team Sooke SAR event.
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