PORTLAND, Ore. – The family of Samuel Boehlke, who disappeared last month in Crater Lake National Park, will remember the 8-year-old boy Saturday at a memorial.
His mother, Kirsten Becker, and father, Kenneth Boehlke, spoke at length this week with the Oregonian for the first time about losing their son and the difficulty of their first holiday season without him.
The Portland couple, who divorced in 2005, kept out of the public eye after Sammy vanished into the woods north of Crater Lake while on a trip to the park with his father.
They’re coming forward now in part to thank those involved in the search for their son, but also with recognition that people from across the country closely followed the search for Sammy and wanted to know more about him.
“When one child is lost it touches everyone,” said Becker, 46, a manager at a Portland real estate investment company. “So this is not just a private tragedy, this is a community tragedy, and it touches everyone with a very heavy hand.”
Sammy had a passionate personality, bordering on stubborn. His joys were as deep as his disappointments, Becker said. He also had a mild form of autism, which manifested itself in a fear of loud noises and bright lights.
That complicated the work of the more than 200 search-and-rescue workers who arrived at Crater Lake after Sammy’s disappearance on Oct. 14 and couldn’t use the customary air horns or whistles.
The boy and his father had stopped to play on a cinder slope where Sammy saw some yellow he hoped might be gold. As darkness approached and his dad walked a short distance to the car so the two could return to their rented cabin near Diamond Lake, Sammy stayed on the slope, refusing to come down.
Kenneth Boehlke chased up after him, he said, but Sammy, likely thinking it was a game, stayed 50 feet ahead.
“I never caught up with him, and at that point he disappeared over the top somewhere and I lost him,” said Boehlke, 48.
For a week, National Park Service searchers and others scoured the area with dogs, helicopters and heat-sensing cameras, but no trace of the boy was found. Intermittent searching continued until this month when snow started falling.
During the search, the couple were cooped up in a duplex near park headquarters getting briefings twice daily from search commanders, but they weren’t allowed to help because search managers didn’t want dogs to be thrown off by their scent.
“I still would rather have gone,” Boehlke said. “Basically you’re just stuck there waiting.”
Becker said she’s raised more than $6,000 in a fund set up at U.S. Bank that she will use to reimburse some of the expenses of volunteer searchers and hire a tracker next summer to continue the hunt.
“I need evidence (of Sammy) for the final grieving process to occur,” she said.
Any money left over will go toward a scholarship to send children with disabilities to Portland Parks and Recreation summer camps, where Sammy was always happy, she said.
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