Seattle mushroom hunter missing in Chelan County

Published 3:38 pm Wednesday, June 12, 2013

WENATCHEE — A Seattle woman who failed to return from a mushroom-hunting day trip on Saturday wasn’t discovered missing until Tuesday because she lives alone, Chelan County Undersheriff John Wisemore said.

Family members didn’t know Hildegard Hendrickson was overdue until they were contacted after her car was reported as suspicious at a trailhead, Wisemore said.

About 30 searchers with the help of a dog on the ground and a helicopter in the air were looking Wednesday in the brushy Chikamin gulch area near Basalt Peak trail, on national forest land about 10 miles north of Lake Wenatchee.

They have found some tracks they believe were left by Hendrickson, 79, who walks with a stick or cane, Wisemore said.

“We hope it has a happy ending,” Wisemore said.

Hendrickson is a retired faculty member and department chair with Seattle University’s Albers School of Business and Economics, The Seattle Times reported. She earned a doctorate at the University of Washington and went to Seattle University in 1967 to help start its MBA program. She taught until 1996.

The Puget Sound Mycological Society lists Hendrickson as someone people can email with questions about mushroom identification. She joined the group in 1972 and she and her late husband were recognized as mushroom experts.

“She is very highly regarded. We’re just beside ourselves,” said the group’s president, Marian Maxwell.

“We did worry about her, because with her husband passed away, she does a lot of hikes alone,” Maxwell said. “A lot of people asked her not to do that.”