It looked increasingly unlikely that 38-year-old Holly Courtier would be found alive, but after being lost in Zion National Park for 12 days, the woman was rescued.
The Woodland Hills mom went missing on October 6th. 2020 and was found by park rescuers on October 18th after they got a tip about a possible sighting.
The rescue
Sgt. Darrell Cashin, a liaison of the Washington County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue, told local ABC4 News that Courtier was found approximately half a mile from where she was last seen in a parking area.
Jaime Strong, Courtier’s sister, recently gave an interview to CNN in which she said her sister was an experienced hiker that had just headed off to the park in order to spend a couple of days “in nature.” Courtier’s daughter Kailey Chambers told CNN that her mother had hit her head early on into her trip.
Strong confirmed:
“Once she hit her head, she did not have the energy to walk out. She was praying to be found, and we were all praying to find her.”
The injury occurred when a hammock she hung between two trees malfunctioned. It was the same hammock that would save her, however.
“Rangers told us her hammock was seen by a little boy and his mom,” Strong said. “They spotted the hammock, so that was the call that was made to the Rangers.”
The recovery
Courtier is going to have some recovering to do before she’s able to hike again. She was found severely dehydrated and had lost 15 pounds. Her kidneys will need time to recover from the damage done by dehydration.
“The doctor was shocked she was so dehydrated. Her potassium levels were extremely low,” Strong told CNN. “Her levels of her kidney function were very bad. She was starting to show signs of her kidneys shutting down.”
Courtier was found in a thickly vegetated area along the Virgin River, which does not contain potable water.
It’s full of toxins and the Sheriff’s liaison said she would have likely died if she had spent 12 days consuming it.
But she was too weak to try, according to her daughter.
“She was too weak and disoriented (to seek help). She was unable to take more than a step or two without collapsing. This prevented her from being able to seek out help. She told me she was so dehydrated she couldn’t open her mouth.”
The manpower
Chambers told CNN that her mother decided to spend time in the park because she had lost her job and had time to pursue her dream of seeing the country’s national parks.
“She lost her job as a nanny due to Covid-19. The family could not afford to keep paying her. She made that a positive thing, said that gave her the time to get out, see the parks.”
Courtier’s daughter traveled 500 miles from San Diego to the park to help find her mother and to bring local searchers together.
She begged for help online from hikers once rangers called off the search due to a lack of leads.
“I know she would not give up on me, so I refuse to give up on her,” she told CNN affiliate KCAL.
Sgt. Darrell Cashin told the local ABC affiliate about the number of resources that went into the search. It involved K9 units, a number of the department’s highly-trained investigators, and the study of everything from surveillance footage from local businesses to Courtier’s demeanor so they could try to determine where she might have gone. (And this was all in addition to the park’s own rescue service.)
“They had everything about Holly they possibly could’ve gotten to give an indication of what her behavior was like and where she might have gone. Understand, there’s a lot of country up there. If you go off-trail, it will be virtually impossible to find somebody unless they want to be found,” Cashin said.
But he has some questions about the rescue.
A further investigation
Cashin doesn’t think the story adds up and there’s still an investigation going on into what happened.
While the family has explained that Courtier was found in bad shape, the Seargent doesn’t understand how she could still be alive much less walk out of the park on her own as she did. It turns out she did not need transport assistance when she was located/
“If she had been drinking that water, unless she had some really high immune system, she would’ve been very, very ill and probably unable to come out on her own,” he said. “She either took a lot of water with her or had another clean water source that was near here, but the Virgin River is not that source.”
He also thinks the family’s statements just don’t add up.
“Physically, she seemed to be in a condition that did not warrant an ambulance and they felt was comfortable to release her to her family to address,” Cashin added.
He also said Courtier left California in the middle of the night without telling her family where she was going and that there was “some question of her decision-making regarding her trip to the park.”
As for being lost for 12 days – he just doesn’t see how it could happen in that location:
“If she’s by the Virgin River…[s]he’s in that main part of the canyon, which always has thousands of people walking up and down those trails. I’m sure people walked by yelling for her. The statements that the family is giving and the statements that the park is giving don’t add up.”
As of October 21, the family had not responded to those queries, though it’s unclear if they’re required to do so. After all, stranger things have happened and they’re busy helping their loved one recover.
Be sure to scroll down below to see Inside Edition‘s take on the whole ordeal.
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