ZOEY DORSEY - 4 yo - Brookings OR

Endangered Missing


ZOEY DORSEY
DOB: Jul 14, 2005
Missing: Mar 17, 2010
Height: 4'2" (127 cm)
Eyes: Brown
Race: White
Age Now: 4
Sex: Female
Weight: 40 lbs (18 kg)
Hair: Brown
Missing From:
BROOKINGS OR United States

Zoey was last seen at her home on March 17, 2010. She was wearing a
white t-shirt and blue pants.

ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)
Curry County Sheriff's Office (Oregon) 1-541-247-3242

Search efforts renewed at first light Thursday morning for a
4-year-old girl missing overnight from her Mountain Drive home northeast
of Brookings.
Overnight searches by a Coast Guard helicopter with a giant search
light were fruitless. A National Guard helicopter was conducting a
thermal scan of the area at 8 a.m. before searchers headed out into the
forest on foot.
The Curry County Sheriff's Office has scheduled a press conference
for noon at the Brookings Police Department to give a full report on the
search effort.
Volunteers are not being sought as of 8 a.m. To volunteer for search
efforts later, should they become necessary, call the Curry County
Sheriff's Office at 541-247-3242, ext. 4.
Hope of quickly finding 4-year-old Zoe Dorsey missing in the
mountains near Brookings faded with the sunset Wednesday evening as
three helicopters and more than 40 search and rescue workers scoured the
dense forest around her home.
“It’s like she just disappeared into thin air,” said one volunteer
searcher returning to the command base at the top of Mountain Drive.
Search crews from four different counties continued to arrive at the
scene as darkness fell, and plans were already underway to launch a
massive search in the morning.
Authorities began searching for the Zoe at about 3 p.m. Wednesday
after receiving a 911 call from the parents. The family lives near the
highest point of Mountain Drive, a long, steep winding mountain road
that begins about two miles up the north bank of the Chetco River.
By 4:30 p.m., search and rescue teams from Curry and Del Norte
counties were scouring the area on foot and using all terrain vehicles.
Three helicopters, including one from Brookings-based Cal-Ore
Lifeflight, criss-crossed they sky in hopes of spotting something
through the dense vegetation.
At one point a helicopter pilot directed searchers to something white
on the side of the mountain (Zoe was reportedly where a white T-shirt),
but it turned out to be nothing.
Meanwhile, authorities telephoned Mountain Drive residents and went
door-to-door, asking people to search their property and any structures
that a small child could hide in. A number of neighbors showed up at the
command center offering their help. Several people who said they were
familiar with the terrain set out on nearby hiking and logging trails.
As the evening grew dark the pilot of a helicopter equipped with a
heat-detecting device reported seeing heat from searchers and small
animals, but not Zoe.
At 8 p.m., rescue workers were preparing to conduct an intensive grid
search immediately around the residence, which sits atop steep
property. Several tracking dogs, including a blood hound, were on scene.

"The last crew crawled in at about 3 a.m.," said Undersheriff Bob
Rector.
“We’ll do what we can, but it’s too dangerous to send people out into
the dark,” said Curry County Sheriff’s John Bishop. “We will be out
again, with the helicopters, at first light.”
While authorities at the scene did not suspect foul play, a photo and
description of Zoe was sent to and posted on the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children Web site as a precaution.
Zoe, whose attends Head Start at Upper Chetco School, has brown,
shoulder length hair and brown eyes. She is 4-feet 2-inches tall and is
wearing a white Princess and the Frog shirt, blue pants and tennis
shoes.
Anyone who may have seen Zoe should call the Curry County Sheriff's
Department at 541-247-3242.

A 4-year-old girl was found alive and taken to a
Crescent City, Calif., hospital Thursday night after being found by a
search party less than 200 yards from her home outside Brookings.
The Curry County Sheriff's Office reported that
search parties discovered Zoey Dorsey, who had disappeared from her home
Wednesday afternoon, in steep, rugged woods just as darkness was making
the rescue effort more difficult.
Sheriff's Deputy Randy Ullom says Zoey was
taken by ambulance to Sutter Coast Hospital with her parents following
the ambulance.
More than 100 searchers combed
the area on foot Thursday, aided by helicopters and six dog search
teams. The family lives up the Chetco River, east of Brookings.
Jackson County search-and-rescue teams were among
those combing the hillsides across the area Thursday, looking for the
girl who was reported missing around 3 p.m. Wednesday.
A flock of helicopters, including three that
volunteer with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, has buzzed over
the rural neighborhood about two miles east of Brookings on the north
bank of the Chetco River Road looking for the little girl.
Searchers on the ground drove, hiked and even
crawled after clues, as authorities brought in trained search teams from
across the region and welcomed help from the public.
Zoey, 3-feet, 6-inches tall and weighing about 40
pounds, had last been seen wearing a white Princess and the Frog shirt,
blue pants, and white, purple-and-blue tennis shoes that light up, the
Curry County news release said.
She reportedly
slipped away right after her mother brought her home from preschool.
Deputies and Oregon State Police troopers
immediately went to search and talk to witnesses, the Curry County
Sheriff's release said. Authorities have said foul play isn't suspected.
Curry County Sheriff John Bishop and helicopter
owner Dan Brattain, president of Brookings-based Cal-Ore Life Flight,
started an aerial search as soon as the call was relayed to authorities
Wednesday. Search teams from across the region, all part of
California-Oregon Regional Search and Rescue, rushed to help.
While searchers trekked over trails through steep,
brushy terrain and logging roads and surveyed the area from the air,
newspaper Web sites, and radio stations helped get the word out, along
with an automated calling system known as "A Child Is Missing" that
contacted all homes within a 3-mile radius of the Dorsey home.
Specialized teams had continued to search after
dark, with a Coast Guard helicopter lighting the way with seachlights,
Bishop said in a Thursday news release.
A state animal trapper also was contacted in response to a recent sighting
of a large mountain lion in the area, the sheriff's release said. A
team of dogs trained to track animals had worked in the area.
Searchers from across the region patrolled roads,
traversed hillsides on all-terrain vehicles and on foot, and even
crawled through brush on their hands and knees in search of clues,
Bishop said.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters said he had planned to travel to Curry County today to join
local ground search teams, ATVs and helicopters.
A Jackson County helicopter used a forward-looking
infrared radar, known as FLIR, to look for body heat that could have
been coming from the child obscured in brush or darkness. An Oregon Air
National Guard helicopter with that equipment also had joined the search
Thursday.

A missing four-year-old Brookings girl found "ok" and sent to an
area hospital Thursday night after a 26-hour search, according to the
Curry County Sheriff.
Sheriff John Bishop said, Zoey Dorsey walked away from her home on
Mountain Drive around 3 PM Wednesday afternoon setting off a
community-wide search.
Around 10 PM Thursday night, Bishop said, Brookings independent
volunteer searchers, Don Hodges, Robert Crump, and Peggy Crump found the
girl down a steep ravine, less than two miles from her house, huddled
under some brush and starting into hypothermia.
He said Dorsey's core body temperature was in the mid eighties and
it's doubtful she would have survived another night out in the cold.
Meanwhile, hundreds of search and rescue crews and volunteers from
across the region flooded the area desperately searching for Zoey during
the past few days.
Around the 24-hour mark, 3 PM Thursday, a civil air patrol plane
circled the search area playing a recording from Zoey's grandmother
telling the girl "it's ok to come out," "you're not in trouble," and "we
love you".
Helicopters for the National Guard, the Coast Guard and surrounding
county search and rescue teams took to the skys while hundreds of
volunteers took to the trecherous terrain surrounding the family home.
Bishop said "this is probably the worse case you could have as a
sheriff."
A case sparking strangers, neighbors and family friends into action.
Michelle Harris volunteered to hike around the property saying, "I've
known Zoey all my life, I've spent Christmas with her, holidays with
her, when I heard about it all I could do was hike."
A community member and volunteer hiker said, "I have a daughter the
same age, the communities concerned so we'll do all we can to find her."
A Jackson County Search and Rescue volunteer, Deana Carvalho said,
"It's a child, I have kids of my own so I do anything I can to help
other county's on their searches."
Every one with one goal, find Zoey and bring her home.
In a late night press release the Sheriffs Office wrote, "this draws
to an end one of the largest Search and Rescue Missions ever in Curry
County. Sheriff Bishop would like to thank the hundreds of Search and
Rescue volunteers from all over Oregon who responded the area. The
businesses in the community who donated all of the water and food for
the searchers, and then to all of the volunteer searchers from the
community. Because of all this cooperation a little 4-year-girl who
would not have survived another night in the woods and her parents were
re-united at Sutter Coast hospital."