James Jacob Dutton goes by the name of Jake Dutton.
Jake is a veteran of
the U.S. Coast Guard.
Jake is studying alternative medical services for
pain relief through physical therapy.
Jake is active in enviromental
concerns and is taking classes to help children with pain symptoms. Jake
lives in Eugene Oregon on Portland street.
There is a person on Kval's comment page asking you to send tips to them. DO NOT SEND TIPS to anyone other than the police. Please. If tips go to some random person, the family or the police may never receive them.
Missing man’s family agonizes
Unusual circumstances delayed a search for a Eugene man last seen two months ago
Published: August 17, 2012 12:00AM, Today
Cynthia Boucher says she switches between numbness and tears.
The Vancouver, Wash., woman’s 31-year-old
son, James “Jake” Dutton of Eugene, disappeared two months ago while
hiking in the Cascades. His body has not been found.
In an unusual twist, searchers did not
start looking for Dutton until six weeks after he was supposed to have
emerged from his trek on the steep and heavily forested French Pete
Trail south of Cougar Lake in the Three Sisters Wilderness.
Boucher is in Eugene with relatives this
week to clear out her son’s apartment. She hasn’t lost hope that Dutton
will be found alive, but acknowledged that she’s having to accept the
possibility that he may be dead.
“Every day my heart breaks into smaller pieces,” she said.
A combination of reasons contributed to the delayed search for Dutton.
He was single, unemployed and apparently
did not tell any family members or friends where he was going or when he
expected to return.
At the French Pete trailhead, he filled out
a U.S. Forest Service permit slip to use the trail, which indicated
when he started and when he planned to end his hike.
Boucher’s grief is mixed with questions
about her son’s disappearance, especially why Forest Service officials
didn’t use the permit to figure out that he had not returned from his
hike and that his pickup was still at the trailhead, so authorities
could have started searching for him sooner.
Yet Boucher admits that her son contributed
to the delayed search by not notifying her or other relatives about his
plans for a three-day hike in the rugged wilderness.
The hard lesson from her family’s tragedy
is that “young people should not go off into the woods without letting
somebody know where you are going,” she said.
People regularly go missing in Oregon’s wilderness. Often they are found. Sometimes they are not.
On Wednesday, Marion County officials
suspended the search for 52-year-old Ronald Ohm, who was last seen Aug. 9
while hiking near Russell Lake in the Mount Jefferson area of the
Willamette National Forest, about 40 miles north of where Dutton
disappeared.
Five years ago, University of Oregon math
professor Daming Xu disappeared during a solo hike on Olallie Mountain, a
few miles from the French Pete trail. Searchers have never found his
body.
Little margin for error
John Miller, search and rescue coordinator
for the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, said that when people hike alone,
especially in remote wilderness areas, they are “totally self-reliant
and there is not a whole lot of margin for error, so it’s important to
let other people know where they are, just as kind of a safety measure.”
“Mr. Dutton would have been searched for much sooner if he had let somebody know of his itinerary,” Miller said.
Dutton, the youngest of Boucher’s two sons, moved to Eugene about eight years ago, after serving in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Relatives say that he received disability payments from a back injury that occurred during his service.
The back problem led to Dutton’s interest in alternative medicines and therapies for pain management, relatives said.
He volunteered and worked as a personal
caregiver for a disabled person until last spring, when his back problem
prevented him from lifting.
Relatives described Dutton as introspective, quiet and someone who did not share much about his personal life.
Boucher, for example, knew that her son had dated a woman named Amy, but Boucher never learned her last name.
He had not mentioned that he graduated in
February of last year from Lane Community College. Boucher found that
out Thursday, when she discovered his diploma among the belongings in
his apartment.
On Friday, June 15, Dutton apparently drove
his 1998 blue Nissan truck to the French Pete trailhead off Aufderheide
Memorial Drive, about 40 miles east of Springfield. He signed a trail
permit slip that said he would return by June 18, Boucher said.
Dutton apparently had his cell phone with
him, but phone coverage does not extend to the French Pete area of the
forest. He had planned to take his 13-year-old nephew, CJ, camping later
in June, after a family reunion in Seaside.
Boucher speculated that Dutton, an experienced hiker and camper, went to the trail to scout campsites.
Boucher began to worry about her son in
mid-June, when she called to remind him about his older brother
Christopher’s upcoming birthday, and she could not reach him on his cell
phone.
Her anxiety increased as the days passed with no response from her son.
On June 28, Boucher had to pick up Dutton’s
nephew at the Portland International Airport, a task that Dutton had
previously agreed to do.
Alarmed, Dutton’s brother Christopher, and then Boucher, drove to Eugene and went to his apartment.
Inside, they found camping gear that Dutton had apparently planned to use on the trip with his nephew.
Boucher tried to find anyone who might know
her son’s whereabouts. She put up posters with his photo around the
College Hill area where he lived and taped a note to his front door that
urged him to call her.
On July 9, Boucher filed a missing persons report with the Eugene Police Department.
Three weeks later, the report, which
contained the description and license plate number of Dutton’s pick up,
triggered a response from the U.S. Forest Service, which had found the
vehicle on July 30 at the French Pete trailhead.
No signs found
Two searches, involving law enforcement personnel, volunteers and search and rescue dogs, took place on July 31 and Aug. 5.
No signs of Dutton were found.
Boucher doesn’t understand why Forest
Service officials didn’t read her son’s permit slip to notice that he
was overdue from his trip.
“The dots should have been connected,” she said.
But Willamette National Forest spokeswoman
Judith McHugh said officials did not immediately become concerned about
Dutton because forest officials don’t regularly pick up or read the
permit slips, or match them with vehicles at the trailhead.
Forest Service officials use the slips to
monitor overall usage of wilderness area trails, not to track the
whereabouts of individuals, she said.
Also, the French Pete trail leads to
several other trails in the Three Sisters Wilderness area, McHugh said,
and it’s common for people to spend several days or more in the
backcountry with their vehicles parked at trailheads.
Boucher and other relatives reject theories that Dutton may have committed suicide or disappeared on purpose.
His back pain occasionally made him depressed, Boucher said.
“He has had depression off and on, but he’s never attempted suicide,” she said.
Other clues indicate that Dutton planned to
return, including notes on his calendar for appointments and the
camping trip with his nephew.
Boucher also found a handwritten note from Dutton that he apparently had planned to mail to her.
Dutton wrote that he wanted to take his
nephew to a retreat led by Leia Hart of Eugene, a healer and teacher of
“energy medicine and core shamanism.”
“I just got back from a introductory
session with Leia and I think it would be interesting to kick off CJ’s
northwest trip with a facilitated exploration of nature,” Dutton wrote.
He signed the note “Jake” next to a drawing of a heart.
Looking for witnesses
Eugene Det. Jeff Donaca, who is
investigating Dutton’s disappearance, said he plans to use the permit
slips from the French Pete trail to interview people who were on the
trail during the same period as Dutton.
Donaca said he doubts Dutton deliberately
disappeared. “If you are intentionally going to go missing, why would
you file paperwork in the area that you are going to hike?” he said.
Miller of the sheriff’s office, said another search for Dutton will take place, though he could not say when.
With limited personnel and frequent
emergencies, “it’s kind of a like a triage process,” Miller said. “It’s
often not what friends or family want, but it’s what we need to do
because our goal is to save lives whenever possible. Our secondary goal
is to find missing and deceased subjects whenever possible.”
Meanwhile, Boucher, with help from her
sister Kathy Jo Raley and her companion, Richard Kafer of Edmonds,
Wash., is engaged in the heartbreaking task of sorting through her son’s
belongings at his apartment, deciding what to keep and what to give
away.
“I alternate between being numb and uncontrollable weeping,” Boucher said. “It’s kind of living hour to hour.”
“Every day my heart breaks into smaller pieces.”
— Cynthia Boucher, Mother of James Dutton
Missing Person
People with information about the whereabouts of James “Jake” Dutton should contact:
Eugene Det. Jeff Donaca:
541-682-5193 
