I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell

I wasn't sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I'd share them here. I've been an SAR officer for a few years now, and along the way I've seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in. <br><br>* I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time they just wander off the path, or slip down a small cliff, and they can't find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old 'stay where you are' thing, and they don't wander far. But I've had two cases where that didn't happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on. <br>The first was a little boy who was out hunting with his father. They were up on a mountain, and the kid was scouted out a deer, but he didn't come back. His father looked for him, and when he couldn't find him he came down and called for help. We went up, and there was just... no sign of him. We searched everywhere, and our best guess is that he either A) went down a drop that the dad didn't see or B) got spooked and wandered off. We searched that mountain for five days, and we found absolutely no trace of him. We gave up, and the dad essentially blocked it out and went on with his life. I haven't heard anything from him in a long time, and I don't think the mom handled it very well. <br>The other was a young woman who was climbing with her husband. Apparently they'd climbed together over a hundred times, and they were on a mountain they'd already conquered a couple of times. She was coming down with a bag when she fell, and we think she broke her leg when she landed. Her husband didn't see the fall, but he heard her scream and he came over and she was gone. We searched that area, and the only trace of her we could find was her bag, which she'd dropped when she fell. It had busted open, and we found most of the stuff in it, but we never found her. <br><br>Now, obviously someone could have gotten these two. I'm not saying that it's weird as hell that they seemed to just vanish, and no signs of an animal attack were ever found. But the reason I bring these two up is because of the third case. <br><br>A ten year old girl fell down an embankment when she was riding her bike along the road that goes through the forest. It was pretty bad, and she broke both of her legs as well as her back. She's not going to walk again, but she's going to survive. The weird part is what she said happened after the accident. She said that she was laying there, trying to call for help, but no one could hear her. She saw a man come down the embankment, but when she saw his face she said she got really scared and she started screaming. Then she said that she saw a bunch of people come down the embankment and... I can't exactly quote her, because I wasn't there and I don't remember what the report said exactly, but the gist of it is that they covered her with leaves and she couldn't see them anymore. She said that she was in a lot of pain, and she wanted to go to the hospital, but she couldn't move and no one could hear her. She waited, and eventually she heard us calling for her, and she tried to direct us to where she was. She was absolutely terrified when we found her, and she kept asking if someone had called 911 for her. When we told her that nobody had, she started crying. <br><br>I don't know what caused this accident. I don't know who the people she claims she saw are. I don't know why they would hide a little girl who was badly injured in the leaves. But I do know this: When we took her to the hospital to get her fixed up, she was absolutely terrified to look out the window.