16 Year old boy missing in Anza Borrego

[Mtbikbob]

You guys are rough. Yeah, lots of information to process and decide whats what. The kid is still missing and most likely would have pop up somewhere by now. Until you raise a teen up yourself you just wont understand what its like. I feel sorry for the mom, they feel it the worst. I am convinced search and rescue would have found him if he was there in the desert, but that did not stop me from helping to go look.

[Guest]

I have raised two teens. Oldest is 20 and next is 15, then my two little ones. But, I have to say NONE OF THEM went through this. So, while I have raised teens, your right I never went through it. It's all in the parenting.

Question though. Since you went, why didn't mom show up? You have teens and your not the parent and you went.

A lot of facts about this case just bother me. Sorry. It does.

[blackZZR]

You guys are rough. Yeah, lots of information to process and decide whats what. The kid is still missing and most likely would have pop up somewhere by now. Until you raise a teen up yourself you just wont understand what its like. I feel sorry for the mom, they feel it the worst. I am convinced search and rescue would have found him if he was there in the desert, but that did not stop me from helping to go look.

I have raised two "teens" up, both are in their late 20s now. This sitch has stunk since it began and gets worse each minute.
I think he is a runaway and the parents don't really care, I have done numerous search and rescues and can never remember on that called for volunteers that a parent did not speak at the beginning to thank everyone for coming. I have to agree that without an official police presence that personal info should not be asked as you are volunteering not being interviewed.
the facts do not line up as if he were really cared for, the reporting the thefts, the late missing persons, cutting off the cell phone, If you wanted to see your son you would not cut off the phone. Plus he could have been tracked by that phone.
You do not wait to report a teen missing, and you do not report a vehicle stolen he is out in.
There is a fly in this ointment. and a big one.
My first look would be at the parents and find out why they do not care enough to show up, or why they cut off that phone

[platnumb4x]

I don't know why volunteers are looking...when the parents arent.

[Guest]

If the teen is hiding out some where. After the facts posted, maybe he is in a safer place and better off?

If the teen is found, I pray that PD takes control, debriefs the child on what happen, and what's going on in that home he feels the need to run away all the time. Maybe CPS needs to be brought in.

[Mtbikbob]

I don't know why volunteers are looking...when the parents arent.

Doug was there. And it still has to be hard on the mom. Maybe she doesn't think he is there. At least looking is doing something as opposed to sitting and worrying.

[Guest]

Where is the biological dad at? Is he aware what is going on? Is the teen with him maybe? He has never been mentioned.

I agree Bob. I know personally, I don't care how much sleep I didn't get, how worried I was. I would have been there. Even if I just sat in a chair and answered questions, and poured coffee. The support of being there would be enough.

UPDATE: Amanda Burns (not sure who she is) has reported that one of Mickey online acounts (some dirt bike video or something) was accessed in Feb' 2010. Maybe a good sign?

[Guest]

Part 1
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February 25, 2010 (San Diego’s East County) - Grounded for stealing his stepfather's motorcycle and going joyriding November 20th in a Riverside County park, 16-year-old Mickey Guidry (also called Mike or Mikey) took his parents’ blue Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV on Thanksgiving to join friends who were camping at 5454 Split Mountain Road in Ocotillo Wells. He left camp at 3 p.m. on Friday, November 27th—and hasn’t been seen since. Now ECM has learned that this wasn't the first time the teen has gone missing. Sheriff officials are treating the case as a runaway.


But the boy's mother, Missy Perucca, believes her son made it out of the desert alive and may now be living elsewhere--and hopes he didn't meet with foul play. "I just hope someone somewhere knows something and reports it to the police so we can finally have a direction to go in," she said.


On Saturday, the 28th, a family off-roading reported the Jeep abandoned, tire worn to the rim, along Fish Creek Wash, 22 miles along a rugged, rocky off-road vehicle trail on November 28th. They spotted it in the morning, but didn’t report it until 5:30 p.m., when Ranger Don Strampfer at Anza Borrego State Park confirmed the Jeep had been reported stolen. Guidry’s stepfather reported the Jeep stolen but declined to file a missing persons report on his son, believing the boy would return as he had in the prior joyriding episode.He'd asked permission to go camping for the weekend with friends, and when his parents refused, he took off in the Jeep.


Unaware that a teen was missing, Strampfer waiting until Sunday to visit the site by daylight. He found a key in the ignition and turned it, but the vehicle was not driveable, stuck in sand with one wheel. “The front bumper was torn off. The front tire was blown off and the rim was melted down. He was hell-bent to get where he was going (assuming Guidry was driving). He couldn’t go any further,” he said, adding that Guidry likely took off on foot—or may have been picked up by passerbys, since it was the businest weekend of the year for off-roading.


Guidry on Mt. PalomarBut Guidry’s wallet, with his high school ID, was left in the vehicle. His cell phone had been shut off after his parents reported the vehicle stolen. Authorities believe the teen may have tried to walk back, or cut across rough terrain around 8 miles to Highway 78.


He had no flashlight. No water. No food. His wallet, ID, and clothes were left behind in the Jeep. No working cell phone. His cell phone, though its service was cut off, was not in the vehicle when it was found.


Despite these disturbing circumstances, Sheriff’s officials have treated his disappearance as a teen runaway case. No forensic evidence was gathered from the Jeep or the scene where it was found. Only a cursory search has been done on the boy’s computer. Media was not notified of the missing teen until three weeks after his disappearance—and then only because an aerial search was finally mounted; officials say they issued a release because the public would ask questions about helicopters and dog teams combing the area weeks after the teen vanished.


“There is no explanation as to why the SD Sheriffs didn’t bother to start looking for him until three weeks after I reported him missing,” Perucca, posted in a comment on East County Magazine February 8th. They tell me that they “thought he’d been found already”…but they never verified it."


Some authorities dispute that contention; Sheriff’s representatives, Ranger Stampfer, and Guidry’s mother provide conflicting details.


On Monday, November 30th, Ranger Stampfer reached Perucca, Guidry’s mother, to inform her the Jeep had been found. He confirmed that she told him her son had taken the Jeep.


She filed a missing person’s report on her son later that same day with the San Diego County Sheriff. Detective Anthony Radicio took the report.


“At 4:50 p.m., I received a satellite call from the boy’s stepfather in Afghanistan,” Stampfer disclosed, adding that Guidry’s mother conveyed Stampfer’s request to her husband. Major Douglas Perucca had deployed to Afghanistan on November 28th, the Saturday after his son took the Jeep. “He said Mickey was familiar with that area, because he’d taken him out there multiple times,” Stampfer recalled.


On Saturday, December 5th, Stampfer next heard from family friends who came to get the Jeep.



“If it was my kid, I would have had my own search team out there 24/7—immediately,” he noted.


Stampfer then arranged a meeting with his staff and supervisor, and made flyers to post in the Anza-Borrego area. He next spoke with Mickey’s mother on the 12th. “She called me back to ask if we found a cell phone in the Jeep, and she informed me that her son, Mickey, was still missing,” he said.


He received a call from Detective Pat Yates, San Marcos Sheriff Substation, at some point and learned that a major search was being planned. But Stampfer confirmed, “Nobody did a search in at least the first week.”


Mickey’s mother says she made numerous calls to Sheriff’s officials. “They just said, `Oh, he ran away. He’ll come home when he is ready. They pretty much just blew it off until I sent them a letter…I told them I would go higher up, up to the media, whoever was higher because they wouldn’t give it any attention,” she told East County Magazine.


Jan Caldwell, spokesperson for Sheriff Bill Gore (photo, left), says a deputy responded “immediately” after the first call was made. “The detective has tried numerous times to speak with the parents, however his calls are never returned,” she said in an e-mail to East County Magazine. “He has even left cards with neighbors.”


Caldwell suggested we invite the boy’s mother to meet with us and detectives. She declined, stating she felt it would be a waste of time and that she would rather spend time searching for her son or seeking media coverage of his case. So ECM met with three Sheriff’s representatives on our own.


“I can tell you that the husband did not report the kid missing for several days, even though they reported the car stolen,” said Captain Don Crist. “There were several prior incidents like this one.”

[Guest]

Part 2
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One week earlier, detectives learned, Guidry’s stepfather reported his motorcycle stolen. Guidry had taken it joyriding on Ortega Highway in a state park in Riverside County. When it ran out of gas, he walked out and upon meeting up with a park ranger, made up a story that he’d been kidnapped, but escaped. The fib sparked a helicopter search for the kidnappers, until the teen confessed to a Riverside Sheriff’s deputy that the story was not true.


According to Detective Patrick Yates, “The Mom reported that had happened before that. Ours is perhaps the third or fourth time that he had taken a vehicle from the parents.” Perucca disputes that there were prior episodes, but did confirm the Riverside situation. “He was just stupid. He was afraid he would get in trouble, so he told them he’d been kidnapped. He didn’t realize it would be such a big problem and start a big search.”


Asked if the family got a bill for the search due to the bogus story, she replied, “They said they were going to send us the bill, but they haven’t yet.”



Crist said the stepfather was advised when reporting the Jeep stolen that the boy could be apprehended at gunpoint, since without a missing persons report, deputies would assume the driver to be armed and dangerous. He said it is rare for parents to follow through with a stolen vehicle report by a teen for that reason. “Three times they declined to report him missing,” he said.


At first, Perucca said that she and her husband believed Mickey would return home after the weekend, and assumed he was safe with friends. They had the cell phone company turn off his cell phone service as a punishment and planned to ground him when he came home.


But he never returned.


Crist defends the department’s actions. “We did take it seriously. We expended a lot of energy,” he said. “Our detective went to the house. He even left cards with neighbors. We even tried to call the father in Afghanistan on his cell phone…She [the mother] even said `Quit calling my neighbors.’”


But Perucca tells a different story. “They never said they wanted him to contact them,” she said of her husband. “They never once asked for his e-mail.” She said she stopped responding to the detective who came to the house because she didn’t believe he was taking the case seriously.


“I told him to assign the case to somebody else—he kept saying `Your son is a runaway and we’re not going to look for him. After those three weeks, I told him `Don’t call me and don’t go to my house anymore. I wanted the case to go to someone who would actually go look for my son….How do they know he didn’t get picked up by some pervert and buried in the desert?”


She said she had friends on dirt bikes go search the desert for her son. She contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and had flyers made. Guidry is listed there as an "endangred runaway." Mickey's mother said officials in local law enforcement tried to discourage her from putting up posters. “They said not to waste my time.”


On December 14th, Yates said he got a call from the boy's mother, who hung up when he put her on hold for “less than 30 seconds” to respond to Deputy Radicia. He says he called all of her phone numbers and the stepfather’s several times over the next three days, then knocked on neighbors’ doors.


He said when the boy was first reported missing, the department viewed it as a “standard runaway case.” There are more than one million missing kids, he added.


Asked how many runaways return within the first 48 hours or so, he acknowledged, “99%.” Most of the rest are parental abductions, he confirmed.


Asked why a disabled vehicle abandoned in a remote desert location wouldn’t trigger concern that the boy may have come to harm, he replied, “People dump vehicles in the middle of nowhere all the time.”


Asked why the department finally issued a press release, posted quietly on its website on December 17 or 18, he replied, “Generally when there is a lot of activity in the field, the public will ask questions.”


As for why Search and Rescue operations were not commenced until December 17th, with a major search not held until December 20--over three weeks after the vehicle was found--Yates maintained that there was a search “immediately” with “units on the ground and in the air. He said Rangers in Anza Borrego had also done some initial searching.


When asked about Yates’ statement, Stampfer expressed surprise. “I do circles around for about a hundred yards and follow prints, but it’s nothing like a major search with helicopters and dogs.” He was not certain when the first air search or use of dogs occurred, but confirmed, “Nobody did a search in at least the first week.”


Perucca is upset that the Sheriff has refused to conduct forensic tests on the vehicle. “They never looked at the car,” she said, adding that rain would have destroyed any prints long before the Sheriff’s searches began weeks after Mickey disappeared. “My friends brought it on a flat bed truck and took it home…They never once said can we look at the car.”


Yates said he examined the vehicle, but didn’t say where. Crist said no forensics would be taken because “there was no evidence of a crime.” He added that there could be hundreds of prints, adding “We could bog down the system looking for prints on this and prevent a rape case from getting forensics done…We’re not going to do anything further.”


Told of Yates statement, Perucca responded with anger. “He only looked at the outside of the car. He never looked at the inside. I had it locked. The alarm was set. From the time we reported it missing, they had an entire week to go out to see the car in the desert and they never did….I think what they’re realizing now is they did wrong in this initial thing and they’re trying to cover their butts.”


Stampfer said he looked inside the vehicle and didn’t note anything obviously amiss, such as blood stains. He expressed surprise when told that the Sheriff’s office has declined to take fingerprints, though he concurred with Yates’ contention that it would be hard to find a suspect’s prints when so many other people had been in the vehicle.


Donald A. Parker, sergeant in charge of Search and Rescue operations for the San Diego Sheriff, says he did not find out about the missing teen until December 16th. He and Astrea helicopter pilots flew out the next day but found nothing, other than tracks in the dirt where the Jeep had been (it was removed by friends of the family), and a white blanket that may have been Guidry’s in a wash northeast of the Jeep site.


In coming days, more searches were done by air and on foot. Searchers used Google Earth, knowing they were likely searching for a body after so many weeks. They focused on the route from Split Mountain to the Jeep’s end location at longitude N. 33, 02, 55, W. 116, 01, 54, as well as the route Guidry may have taken on foot if he’d struck out over rugged, boulder-strewn terrain toward Highway 78, visible from a rise near where the blanket was found.


On December 20th, with weather down to 25 degrees, a major search was finally launched with helicopters, Parker, Yates, and about 50 trained volunteer searchers. San Diego’s Search and Rescue has a national reputation for excellence, said Parker. “They all get training. We have one academy a year and we’re always looking for volunteers.” Volunteer searchers include the CEO of Scripps Healthcare, former police, former and current military members, nurses, paramedics, software engineers, and stay-at-home grandmothers.


The Sheriff’s department also brought three or four teams of cadaver dogs. Even after so many weeks, a body would still have a detectable odor, said Parker, who recalled finding one body after six months. They searched Harper Flat, where a searcher reported a smell, but found nothing other than numerous footprints that may have belonged to illegal border crosses who frequent the area.

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