Redondo Beach resident Erik Lamberg, 51, has been missing since May 26. He was last seen in Mendocino County and first reported missing on May 29. The Mendocino Sheriff’s Office received a phone call from a family member who last spoke with him after he was having car trouble around 11:30 p.m. May 26.
According to the “Help Us Find Erik Lamberg,” Facebook page, the search for Lamberg is ongoing.
Police said they utilized two blood hounds to search near the area his van was found on Wednesday and Thursday but were unsuccessful. They plan to continue the search on Friday.
“We really appreciate all the efforts of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office,” one Facebook post said. “We hope the volunteer SAR and the Sheriff’s Office will continue searching until Erik is found. Erik’s Mom, Norma, and his Brother, Arne, are driving up from Los Angeles today to be there. Thank you for all of the love and support.”
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said in a release that his wife Samantha reported Lamberg had his vehicle, a silver 2004 Honda Odyssey, towed to Laytonville, Calif., when it broke down in Leggett. According to Mendocino Police Lt. Shannon Barney, Lamberg had the vehicle repaired and stayed two nights at a local hotel in Laytonville at which time he phoned his family and said he was “fine.” He has not been seen or heard from since.
Deputies confirmed Lamberg’s vehicle was repaired by a local mechanic and that he checked out on May 28.
Barney said sheriffs received an abandoned vehicle report matching Lamberg’s van approximately 20 miles west of Willits on rough Sherwood Road on June 1. Deputies responded and it appeared that the vehicle was stuck in a ditch in the road and abandoned. Lt. Barney said that wood and other debris were placed under the tires in what looked like an attempt to free the vehicle and large footprints were found near the van. There has been no recent activity on his cell phone or credit card. Clothes and other personal belongings, including a cell phone charger, were left in the car.
“It looked like he tried to pull an incline and in the red clay mud he couldn’t make it so he started to back down and slid off the road,” Lt. Barney said. “It looked like he grabbed sticks and bark and other tree debris to put under his tire to build up traction, but it didn’t work.”
His brother-in-law John Schlegal said that Lamberg had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and he was getting away for a little bit and didn’t have an exact itinerary.
“Occasionally the world kind of gets a little much and in this case he wasn’t trying to get away from anything [specific],” Schlegal said. “His plan was to go to Oregon but he might have changed his plan when his car had troubles and had to get fixed.”
He added that Lamberg’s vehicle did not have a history of breaking-down.
“We did have the cell company try to ping the phone but they couldn’t find it,” said Lt. Barney. “It looked like the cell hadn’t been used since the 27th.”
Schlegal said that his sister, Samantha, had originally become suspicious when she didn’t hear from Lamberg because he was good about communicating with his family.
“So it kind of sent up a red flag,” said Schlegal. “And the lack of credit card use definitely did because in this day and age you either have to use a card or get cash out of an ATM and that didn’t happen. It was pretty apparent something had gone wrong and once they found the car it was very apparent something had gone wrong.”
Lamberg is described as 6’5”, 200 pounds with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. The family told police that he may be experiencing mental health issues but has shown no violent tendencies in the past.
“According to the wife he’s not really good with directions, but in this area if he’s stuck on the road there’s only one way in and one way out— it’s not like its open country. It’s dense straight up and down forests,” Lt. Barney said, adding that an aerial search would be virtually impossible because of the dense ground cover. “It’s feasible he could have walked out, been picked up and given a ride. Or he could have, and I don’t know why, walked into the forest at any given point in probably a 30-mile long road.”
Since he was reported missing the Mendocino volunteer-based Search and Rescue (SAR) has combed the area near the location of where the van was discovered with both people and dogs.
“We went out yesterday [Wednesday] with a small search team and searched around his vehicle to see if he went off the road at that location and we found no signs. But it’s very rough terrain and difficult to find tracks,” said Lt. Barney.
According to Schlagal, he was told that the search party picked up a scent on Wednesday and they plan to continue following the trail on Thursday. Lt. Barney reported that during the search the two bloodhounds went in different directions.
“One went west for about a mile and then lost interest and the other went east for approximately five miles and both lost interest,” Lt. Barney said. “Today we deployed a Shepherd in the same location and he went west for that same one mile and there was only 30-yards difference where they quit.”
He said that they hypothesize that Lamberg may have walked west to see if he could see anything and eventually walked back to his car and eventually continued east.
“Speculation is that he may have been picked up by a car or the scent has just dissipated,” Lt. Barney said. “We have such a large area to search, it’s over 600 – 700-square-miles, and it’s almost impossible to actually grid search the entire area, so we’re trying to get some indication of which direction he went.”
Because his cell phone charger was left in the car, Barney hopes that Lamberg just got picked up by a car and hasn’t had a chance to charge his phone.
“I know he was having some difficulties, and if he contacts friends I urge them to call it in as quickly as possible,” said Barney. “I’m hoping he got out of there and he’s just kind of finding his way around and will make some contact somehow.”
The local SAR team runs about 30 calls a year, Barney said.
“We do have cases that are still open and active; it’s an almost unpopulated area along the coast. The closest house to where his car got stuck is eight miles in one direction and about 16 in the other. It’s pretty remote,” said Lt. Barney.
He added that he hopes that the all-volunteer group will be able to go out again tomorrow and do a wider circumference search around where the vehicle was found.
“We are pushing for [the search] to go until they find him, but there’s only so much we can do,” Schlagal said. “We have been told that getting a group of people together to go searching ourselves would be very dangerous, so we are listening to them. We don’t want a different tragedy to happen.”
His wife Samantha, on the Mendocino Sheriff’s Facebook page, asked anyone who may have had contact with Lamberg to contact the Sheriff’s department and requested that he himself be “alerted that his family is missing him. Thank you.”
Lamberg and his wife have two children.
The investigation is ongoing and the Sheriff’s Department requests anyone with information to call 707-463-4086. ER
