Dad, 3 kids missing in mountains for 3 days are found alive

Friends and family members cheer as Frederick Dominguez and his son Christopher arrive by helicopter in Stirling City, Calif., after their rescue today.

Randy Pench / AP

Frederick Dominguez, center, is helped to an ambulance after being rescued with his three children by a California Highway Patrol helicopter.

PARADISE, Calif. A father and three children who vanished on a Christmas tree-cutting trip in the Northern California mountains were found alive Wednesday after huddling in a culvert for warmth during three days of heavy snow.

I m just amazed how well they did, Lisa Sams said after seeing her children and ex-husband for the first time since they were rescued. It was like butterflies in my stomach, like if you were going to go on a very first date.

A California Highway Patrol helicopter crew spotted Frederick Dominguez atop a small bridge and landed nearby, sinking into 2 feet of snow, flight officer David White said. The family had taken shelter in a culvert beneath the bridge and stomped help in the snow, White said.

Friends and family members cheer as Frederick Dominguez and his son Christopher arrive by helicopter in Stirling City, Calif., after their rescue today.

White said it was the last opportunity for the helicopter, with snow falling heavily as it descended.

With another storm coming in, they were just happy to get out of there and get home, he said.

The helicopter ferried the family to safety in two trips; Alexis, 15, and Joshua, 12, were taken out of the woods first. Dominguez, 38, smiled at cheering family and friends as he and 18-year-old Christopher emerged from the helicopter a short time later.

Our hearts are all full right now, said Cory Stahl, who closed his pest control business so his employees could help look for Dominguez, a co-worker. It s a very merry Christmas now.

Joshua Dominguez, second from left, and Alexis Dominguez, third from left, are helped by authorities after they were flown by helicopter to Sterling City, Calif., after their rescue.

The family survived wearing only jeans, sweat shirts and coats and by huddling in a culvert beneath a bridge, sheltered from the outside by twigs and tree branches.

The youngest children were pushed deepest into the shelter, with the father and eldest son blocking the wind, Sams recounted after visiting with them at the hospital.

She said they told of huddling together, telling jokes and singing songs, to pass the time in the first couple days, before beginning to grow scared and depressed in the last 24 hours.

They found water to drink but did not eat snow because their father remembered reading that it could cause hypothermia.

Frederick also had taken off his sweat shirt, torn up the fabric and wrapped it around his children s feet, hoping to stave off frostbite. Alexis toes were changing color, Sams said, but Frederick kept rubbing them to try to keep them warm. Color began to return to the girl s toes in the hospital.

The family found less than a mile and a half from the road said they got lost by going from pine tree to pine tree, trying to find the perfect Christmas tree, before realizing they were lost.

My daughter goes, Mom, you know how we are. We get excited, and we see a tree and then we see another tree, Sams said. They just got lost, and they ended up taking a side road that led them to the opposite direction.

Sams said they told her they did not try to venture from the shelter because they knew their mother was a worrywart and would send a search crew.

I knew that they would pull together, Sams said. We re a really close family.

All four were talking and drinking hot chocolate while being checked at Feather River Hospital for dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite, treating physician Kurt Bower said. He expected them to be released later in the day.

I m surprised how good they are, he said. There s a miracle from God in there somewhere.

More than a foot of snow had fallen in the area since the family disappeared, covering any tracks leading from the truck. The heavily wooded and canyon-crossed area contained drifts as high as 7 feet.

The rescue teams had been racing time and the elements to find the four, as a powerful storm carrying even more snow was headed into the region. The search effort expanded with a break in the weather Wednesday morning, and the helicopter was able to join the search around midday after low-lying clouds lifted.

Dominguez and his children had been missing since Sunday in the region about 100 miles north of Sacramento. Dominguez s pickup truck was found Monday night parked along a mountain road some 25 miles northeast of Chico.

Dominguez parked his Chevrolet pickup along a road near the mountain hamlet of Inskip on Sunday afternoon, then likely walked downhill into the woods with his children and became lost, Butte County Search and Rescue spokeswoman Madde Watt said.

You could get turned around very quickly, she said.

It was clear at the time and for hours after the family entered the woods. The first storm wave didn t hit until Monday.

Because Dominguez had custody of his children at the time, his ex-wife did not know they were missing until she discovered that her youngest child failed to show up at school Monday. Authorities were alerted at 8 p.m. Monday and immediately began a search.

They quickly found the pickup a bare spot beneath it, indicating little snow when the trek began but at least 8 inches of snow was covering the ground, hurting efforts to track them.

The search effort expanded significantly Wednesday morning, as snow had stopped falling for the first time since the family went missing.

About 2 feet of snow was expected to fall Wednesday night and Thursday morning in the area where the family had been missing, said Jared Leighton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sacramento.

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