lemony taste. Yoda, for his part,
impressed Jean with his new-found
ability to snatch flies out of the air and
dig up grubs for dinner.
By 4 p.m., Jean and Yoda had climbed
into her shelter. Despite the moss, the
hard ground was miserable, and the
cold was embedded in her bones. But
she wasn’t giving up. Although Jack
had taken care of her for so many years,
Jean remembered a time when she
hadn’t been dependent on anyone.
Shortly after the Second World War,
her family had moved to the United
States from China. At school, kids
would hurl racial slurs and start fights
with her. Her father had sat Jean down
and offered this advice: you are a little
person. You won’t be strong phys-
ically. You must be strong internally.
Hungry, tired and growing weak, Jean
drifted off to sleep thinking of her
father’s words.
BY NOW, JEAN’S brother, who lived in
Seattle, had become concerned. His
multiple calls to Jean had gone unre-
turned, and when he drove the two
hours to her home, there was no sign
of her. He immediately contacted the
sheriff ’s office, which sent a missing-
person report to all governmental
agencies, including an office at Olym-
pic National Park. Around 1:30 p.m. on
July 22, five days after Jean first entered
the park, an employee there spotted
her truck. He radioed the park’s search-
and-rescue operations squad, and
Zachary Gray, a trail-maintenance
supervisor, gathered a handful of vol-
unteers to look for Jean.
They met at her vehicle. Dust and
water spots indicated it had been there
for several days. Searchers walked into
the woods, calling Jean’s name. They
found nothing. At 7 p.m., with nightfall
approaching, the search was halted.They started up again the next day at
6 a.m. Gray now had a team of 37 under
his command, which he split into four
groups heading in different directions.
Still, he couldn’t buck the nagging feel-
ing that this would end poorly. At 71,
Jean was likely disoriented and probably
injured. Gray had been on 10 searches
already that year. Nearly all had ended
when the team found a body.
At noon, Gray’s two-way radio crack-
led. A searcher had found a plastic urn
with Jack Geer’s name on the side. Gray
had teams focus on a one-kilometre
radius from where the urn was found.
Hours passed. Nothing.
Gray radioed to request a helicopter.
Once aboard, he searched below where
the urn had been found, thinking JeanZZZZZZZAAAAAAACCCCCCCHHHHHHHAAAAAAARRRRRRRYYYYYYY GGGGGGGRRRRRRRAAAAAAAYYYYYYY HHHHHHHAAAAAAADDDDDDD BBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNN
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