Estelle McLellan is praising the Hope RCMP for their communication and care after their assistance in locating her partner Adam Laufer earlier this month.
On the evening of March 16, Laufer drove out on Silver Skagit Road to do some target shooting. When he didn’t return at the time he said he would, his partner McLellan began to worry and called the RCMP. After a few frantic hours, two RCMP members located Laufer walking along the dirt road in the pitch black.
“(Adam is) not one to be late, he’s not one to not be back when he says he will, well he never does that,” McLellan said. When he didn’t show up at 6:30 p.m., she began to feel that something wasn’t right. She began calling around to friends and family, eventually dialing the Hope RCMP.
“I know it seems a bit neurotic and a bit ridiculous, because he’d only been gone an hour or so longer than he should have been. But I just knew something wasn’t right,” she said. The RCMP told her they usually wait 24 hours before responding to a missing person request, but the officer on the phone said she’d look into it.
Meanwhile, Laufer had driven about 40 kilometres along Silver Skagit Road before his truck getting stuck in the snow. He tried digging out the truck, eventually taking a water bottle and his phone with him and starting the hike home.
The RCMP sent two officers out to look for Laufer, finding him after he had been walking for about one and a half hours.
“It was very nice to see the searchlight on the police SUV come around the corner,” Adam said, after what he says was an hour spent fluctuating between confidence and fear that the glimmers caught in his flashlight during the walk could be eyes of wild animals.
The officers drove Laufer first to his truck, then home. Both him and McLellan are grateful to the RCMP for going out of their way to make sure he got home safe.
“How incredible the Hope RCMP were in responding to me, the way they dealt with me, the way they calmed me down, the way they reassured me,” McLellan said, adding the police communicated with her non-stop during the ordeal. “It was just amazing, you just don’t hear about that kind of care from an RCMP, from a police department.”
We’re so lucky to be in a town where we have that sort of attention and care, we’re very, very lucky.”