An 80-year-old Cascadia man was found alive and apparently healthy Sunday morning, July 26, after being missing for 28 hours.
Vernon “Nick” Nivison was reported missing from his residence at 46621 Santiam Highway Saturday morning. Nivison, who suffers from medical conditions including dementia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, was last seen at 9:30 a.m. Family members reported that he apparently left on foot.
After an all-day search on Saturday, the Linn County Sheriff’s Office brought in Rory Read and his search dog Georgia from Yamhill County, who teamed with Linn County Sheriff’s Dep. Josh Rue, Sheriff Tim Mueller said. They found Nivison face down on a steep and brushy hill about a half mile south of his residence, alive but unresponsive.
Nivison’s grandson, Wes Strubhar of Crawfordsville, a volunteer firefighter and medic with Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, said Nivison was in surprisingly good shape when he was found, though he was face down and may have been asleep when located.
Nivison was transported to Lebanon Community Hospital for observation and rehydration.
“The medic who took him to the hospital said his vitals were good, his temperature was good, blood pressure, heart rate were good. Everything was well,” said Strubhar, who noted that Nivison was wearing a quilted shirt when found. “All he needed was fluids.”
Strubhar said Nivison has been showing signs of being in “early” stages of Alzheimer’s.
“Occasionally he would have a dream that would be too real to him, but he usually knew what was going on,” Strubhar said. “The mornings have always been a good time for him.”
Nivison’s wife Louise left him watching TV for 20 minutes on Saturday morning while she made a trip to the Post Office,
Strubhar said. When she returned, he was gone. Louise Nivison did a quick search of the property, located about a mile east of River Bend County Park, and then called the Sheriff’s Office, which responded “wonderfully,” Strubhar said.
“We just didn’t know what had happened,” said Shannon Strubhar, Wes’ wife. “We didn’t know if he’d wandered off in the woods or if someone had picked him up along the highway and taken him somewhere.”
Mueller said that family members said Nivison had told them he wanted to hitchhike to visit family in the Bend area. Those family members in Bend were contacted and Nivison had not been there, Mueller said.
Search and Rescue resources were deployed and searched the area near Nivison’s home along the Santiam River. The Sheriff’s Office Dive Team spent the day searching the river itself, while members of the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Post combed the brushy areas near the river. An OH-58 Kiowa helicopter from the Oregon National Guard also flew the area for several hours. Spur roads were checked on the north and south sides of Highway 20, Mueller said.
Law enforcement agencies throughout the state were alerted to the search for Nivision as well, he said.
On Sunday the Sheriff’s Office coordinated an expanded search of the area along Highway 20 with about 40 trained Search and Rescue personnel. A helicopter from the Oregon National Guard assisted in that effort.
Deputies on ATV’s searched the logging roads while members of the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse searched trails in the area. Deputies and 23 members of the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Post searched the forested areas while two search dogs and their civilian handlers from Yamhill County Search and Rescue attempted to track the missing man.
Mueller said that Dep. Joe Larson, the county’s full-time search and rescue coordinator, was able to get the canine help needed.
“He works with all the other search and rescue coordinators,” Mueller said. “He’s got contacts, he knows where the handlers are and he knows what resources are available. We know who has what. They know we have certain assets and resources they can draw from if they have an incident as well.”
Mueller said that if Nivison hadn’t been found on Sunday, additional agencies were on standby to continue the search Monday. Sheriff’s Offices from Lane, Deschutes, Washington, Benton, Marion, and Jefferson Counties were requested to assist if the search continued.
“My concern was that if we didn’t find him yesterday, he probably wouldn’t have made it through the night,” Mueller said Monday.
“It very well could have been that way.”
Strubhar said family members were surprised that Nivison had gotten as far as where he was found, given what they thought his capabilities were.
“He was on the fringes of what we’d consider the search area to be,” he said. “He was outside of where we, as the family, thought it was possible for him to get to. We’re not sure how he was capable of getting up there.”
He said Nivison was found in tall bracken ferns that grow in the reprod (young production timber) on the steep, north-facing slope, he said.
“He wasn’t visible from above. He was visible from 10 feet away,”
Strubhar, who in the past has volunteered with the Mary’s Peak Search and Rescue Team, said he appreciated the Sheriff’s Office’s cooperation with family members who can sometimes be a hindrance to search efforts.
“It’s kind of hard to keep things coordinated,” he said, noting that things were more organized on Sunday. “I thought the way the Sheriff’s department worked with family was wonderful.”
He said the word that Nivison had been found, just as searchers had ended a break and were preparing to head out to look some more, was “incredibly good news.
“I knew once the 24-hour mark passed, things were not looking good,” Strubhar said. “We were trying not to dwell on that. You start being afraid of what you’d find at that point.”
He said Nivison did not remember what had happened when he was found. He said family members think his grandfather may have tried to go up the hill to check on a gravity water system.
“When he was younger, during the summer he’d go up and clean the screen,” Strubhar said. “It was a typical summertime activity. He may have recalled that and thought it was something he needed to do.”
Family had checked up to the source of the water, though nobody thought Nivison would really be able to make it up there,” he said. His grandfather was found further south, further up the ridge and to the west.
“One of the things he said at hospital, when he was trying to get out of bed, was that ‘I think I can make it up to the highway.’ It seems he thought he needed to get up, to get to the road.”
Strubhar said he’s heard “horror stories” in which law enforcement didn’t respond quickly in cases of missing people and he appreciates the response in this case.
“We were praying a lot and God was gracious,” he said. “I want to give the Sheriff’s department all the credit in the world. But God deserves credit as much or more.
“This was handled very, very well.”