HomeTimeline → this article

New evidence revives search for hiker missing near Sooke

Times Colonist7 July 2023p. A1JDF SAR era

“New evidence revives search for hiker missing near Sooke”, Times Colonist, p. A1, 7 July 2023 ref-only

Summary

The search for a hiker who went missing the previous December in the Sooke area was set to resume on the Saturday after new information was discovered, police said. Data from McDevitt's smartwatch had helped narrow down the area to be searched, CHEK News reported. People were being asked to avoid the area to accommodate search efforts. McDevitt, 34, an avid hiker, was last seen on surveillance video on 9 December carrying hiking poles in the Charters Creek fish hatchery parking lot on Sooke River Road, a few kilometres from Sooke Potholes. She had been due to fly to North Carolina on 10 December.

Written from the article text only. Where the scan is hard to read, the summary was taken from the page image rather than the OCR.

Details

Headline“New evidence revives search for hiker missing near Sooke”
PublicationTimes Colonist
Date7 July 2023
PageA1
EraJDF SAR era
Document typenews report
Original articleProQuest — the scanned page in the Times Colonist digital archive ↗
SourceProQuest Digital Times Colonist via GVPL (bulk export 2026-07-16)
Accessed2026-07-16
Licensingref-only
Record confidenceconfirmed

Archivist's note

Seven months after the original nine-day search, smartwatch data reopened it. Note that this article gives McDevitt's age as 34 while the December 2022 reports and the December 2023 report both give 38 — recorded as printed, not reconciled. This page was recovered from inside the ProQuest bulk export already held in the archive, where it had been listed as referenced but not held.

The clipping

Scan of Times Colonist, page A1, 7 July 2023 — the full page, shown because the article region could not be verified
The full page. The article region could not be verified automatically, so the whole page is shown rather than risk a clipping that cuts off the article. the whole page is shown; the article region within it has not been isolated.

Read the original online

These links leave this archive and point at the publisher. They may change or disappear — the scan held here is the archival copy.

Files

Full page scan (PDF)

Archive notes

This is a full newspaper page and carries unrelated stories as well as the article summarised here. The text is the OCR made from the ProQuest bulk export during the 2026 research phase, not a fresh pass. Recovered from page 40 of the bulk export. AGE DISCREPANCY: 34 here, 38 in the 2022 and 2023 reports.

Record id 2023-07-07-times-colonist-pa1-mcdevitt-search-resumes. Original file in the project archive: 02_articles/2026-07-16_proquest_bulk_export_50_articles_2012-2026.pdf (page 40).

Explore onward

In the timeline

  • 13 December 2022Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue personnel returned to the mobile command base during the search for Melissa McD

Incidents

People named

Places

Topics