Arrived home to find a Robinson newsletter in the mail and learned something that was not reported by the general media. The wife and daughters of James Kim, trapped for a week in the Oregon wilderness by a snowstorm, were discovered by John Rachor, a Robinson R44 helicopter owner, who decided to conduct his own search for the missing family. Reflecting on the fact that James Kim had died of exposure before the family was spotted from the helicopter, Rachor said “It turned out well; I just wish it had turned out better.”
2 thoughts on “Kati Kim and daughters were rescued by a Robinson R44 owner”
Comments are closed.
It’s not exactly a straight line from one to the other, but it’s always encouraging to hear stories like this. A lot of people consider private aviation somewhat frivolous. (For the record, I don’t) There’s a somewhat populist tendency to say “No one actually needs X” (where x might be “More than 200k a year in income”, “their own airplane”, “a snow mobile”, “cosmetic surgery” or whatever) Just last week, the instapundit (not usually much of a populist) floated the idea of banning “private jets” to spread around the suffering of any greenhouse-gas restrictions that wealthier advocates of greenhouse-gas cuts might back. I put “private jets” in quotes, because I’d guess it’d be 5 minutes after the law was passed before some rich guy decided to see just how big a turboprop he could get his hands on. (How nice could one make the interior of a surplus Bear bomber, given nearly unlimited funds?)
I thought this was interesting as well. Apparently from an article I read about the incident, John Rachor had the helicopter because he owned a few restaurants around the area and it was more practical for him to travel. He stated in the article that when he heard about the missing family and where they were headed he immediately thought of the road/ area in question as he knew the area well and guessed the route they took and how it was essentially impassable in the wintertime. He flew out to where his hunch took him and found them. Too late for James Kim of course.
All of the other news sources made it seem as though the helicopter that the family hired – not Rachor – found his wife and kids, but in actuality it was Rachor who alerted the searchers after he found them. It is really sad owing to how close they were to their destination and all.
Wasn’t there a case where actor Harrison Ford rescued someone with his private aircraft? Anyway good post.