LAKE COUNTY — A Lake County Sheriff”s Search and Rescue (SAR) mission in the Mendocino National Forest during the Memorial Day weekend resulted in the rescue of a Tracy man.
On Sunday at approximately 10:30 p.m., sheriff”s deputies responded to a vacation home in Lower Lake to investigate a missing person. Helen Gustafson reported her husband, Ronald Alan Gustafson, 58, failed to return from a day ride he took on his dual-sport motorcycle to visit friends at a cabin in the Board Camp area of the national forest in Colusa County.
Ronald left the vacation home on Swedberg Road in Lower Lake at approximately 11 a.m. Sunday morning and was due to return by 7 pm. Helen last heard from her husband at approximately 4 p.m. as he was leaving the cabin to return to Lower Lake.
Deputies spent several hours before dawn on Monday searching for signs of Ronald or his trail. Despite checking four different forest service roads and venturing as many as 12 miles into the forest, deputies were unable to locate him.
At approximately 8 a.m. on Monday LCSO Lt. Chris Macedo coordinated a SAR operation to locate the man. As information was gathered from Helen, SAR volunteer ATV teams and a SAR volunteer logistical team established a base camp off of Elk Mountain Road. By late morning, a fixed-wing CHP airplane responded to the area from Redding to assist with the search. A U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer also responded to assist.
At approximately noon, SAR authorities determined that Ronald was found by two unidentified motorcycle riders on a forest road near Crabtree Hot Springs. Ronald reportedly wrecked his motorcycle and was injured. The riders who found him reportedly stayed with the injured man until another unidentified party driving a pickup truck came by and managed to get Gustafson into the truck.
As SAR was headed to the area of the wrecked motorcycle, they crossed paths with the pickup truck as Ronald was being driven from the site. A REACH helicopter was dispatched to the area and after finding a landing zone, the man was transported to the air ambulance and flown to the UC Davis Medical center with a possible fractured leg.
It was determined he wrecked his motorcycle on the forest road at approximately 5 p.m. the previous evening and was stranded the entire night where the bike went down.
Rivero said he extends gratitude to the SAR coordinator, Lt. Macedo, the SAR volunteers who contributed to the operation, the California Highway Patrol air crew, the REACH air crew, the U.S. Forest Service and to the civilians who found Gustafson and expedited his rescue.
