Lost and found

By Tony Gonzalez

Published: October 6, 2008

AUGUSTA SPRINGS — Two West Virginia children missing in George Washington National Forest spent Sunday night huddled beneath leaves in a creek bed worrying about “night beasts” but “snuggled up” for warmth.

Zen Ezra Phelan Darby, 8, and Khari Dawn Hatfield, 11, heard a helicopter thundering above the treetops, but no shouts from the rescuers who traversed the heavily wooded and steep terrain throughout the night.

They were found still walking that creek bed Monday afternoon, almost 22 hours after going missing, moving deeper into the woods and carrying a pocket full of “wooly worms,” a spider sack and a leaf with a “neat” spore on it.

The children were uninjured but hungry after they traveled nearly three miles on an Augusta Springs Wetlands trail to a creek near Montgomery Run Lane, northwest of Staunton.

Scott Reese, 44, a church pastor, and his son Blake, 18, found the children at about 1:30 p.m. Monday.

Forty minutes later, the children were eating sandwiches, oatmeal cookies and other snacks in the back of a Churchville Volunteer Fire and Rescue ambulance, surrounded by medical crews and volunteers and waiting for their parents, who had spent much of the day waiting at the county’s command post vehicle.

“We snuggled up to save our body heat,” Khari Hatfield said quietly between bites of Cheetos.

The ambulance soon cleared of tearful emergency personnel as friends Joe Hatfield and Jane Darby reunited with their children.

“I got tired and a little testy at the end there. But God bless you,” Joe Hatfield, of Ranson, W.Va., said to gathered searchers while holding back tears.

He turned away, faced the crowd again and raised his voice: “Give yourselves a hand!”

The search began around 4:30 p.m. Sunday, when Jane Darby, of Martinsburg, W.Va., and five children were reported missing from the two-thirds-of-a-mile wetlands trail they had been walking since noon. The group was in town visiting friends who live in the area.

Khari Hatfield and Zen Darby became separated around 6:30 p.m. when they moved too far ahead of the group. Around 8 p.m., Jane Darby and three of the children, ranging in age from 11 years to 12 months, were found.

The temperature dipped to nearly 40 degrees overnight and the two children were likely without water for a dangerous length of time, Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher said. Khari Hatfield wore just a green dress and sandals and Zen Darby wore sweatpants and a maroon soccer T-shirt.

A team of more than 100 law enforcement officials and volunteers, as well as a Virginia State Police helicopter and as many as six dog teams searched for the children across 10 square miles of rough terrain. Many worked through the night, employing thermal imaging.

It was the area’s second large-scale mountain search in as many weeks. The other, for Earl F. Funk, of Staunton, continued for a seventh day Monday in Shenandoah National Park.

“We went straight up,” Stuarts Draft EMT volunteer Bobby Snyder said of terrain near the wetlands. “There’d be a flat spot at the top of the ridge, then [we’d] go down to the point where I’d be sliding down on my butt.”

Trees blocked out the stars.

“They thought they’d be eaten by wild beasts. ‘Night beasts,’ I think [Zen] called them,” said Scott Reese, who walked the children out of the woods.

Bears and coyotes have been seen in the woods, wetlands area resident Ralph Ellinger said.

“They kept their heads better than I did last night,” said Joe Hatfield, who described his daughter as a nature lover.

Fisher described the children as “savvy” in their survival.

They tried to follow the creek to safety and tried to catch fish, Zen Darby told Scott Reese.

Scott and Blake Reese said they hiked three hours, “with no wrong turns,” to the children.

“I was just overjoyed as a parent to deliver those little ones back to their families,” said Reese, the pastor of Goshen Baptist and Miller Memorial churches. “I really feel this morning that through guidance of the Lord, we found these kids. I really do.”

In the wetlands

Zen Darby, 8, and Khari Hatfield, 11, traveled almost three miles across ridges and rough terrain through the Augusta Springs Wetlands.

2:10 p.m.: Khari and Zen reunited with parents