Ryan Pritchard, 41, was hiking Sunday afternoon with his
sons Jake, 11, and Devon, 18, in the near Lake Barryessa, about 30 miles east
of his Sacramento home, when he slipped on a loose rock and fell 150 feet down
a cliff and landed in a tree.
Devon went to their car to get help and little brother Jake
went down the cliff, got his father’s cell phone and called 911, reaching the
California Highway Patrol dispatcher. But the call was disconnected before he
could give an accurate location and efforts to call again failed.
Solano County Sheriff’s Department dispatchers took the
information and began to work together to try to determine where the subject
was.
The cell phone coordinates got them no closer than a cell
tower in the city of Vacaville, some 30 miles from where the hikers were. Then
a dispatch trainee, Breanna Martinez, got an idea.
She googled the guy’s name. Google took Martinez to Ryan
Pritchard’s LinkedIn page, which then led her to his Facebook page.
“I scrolled down and the very first post was a picture of
his two sons and behind him was the lake — Lake Berryessa,” Martinez told CBS
Sacramento. “And it just said, ‘Hiking the Blue Ridge Trail today.’”
That was all the information the dispatchers needed. A CHP
rescue helicopter crew found the trail, plucked Ryan from the tree and got him
to UC Davis Medical Center all before darkness.
Ryan is being treated for several fractured bones, a head
injury and a broken jaw, his family told CBS Sacramento.
“I am really impressed by this. I’m so proud of them, taking
the initiative and solving the problem,” said the dispatchers’ boss, Solano
County Sheriff Tom Ferrara. “And if you have to come up with a new way of doing
it, that’s just outstanding.”
