Rescuers call off search for runner missing on Cougar Mountain

ISSAQUAH -- King County sheriff's Deputy Peter Linde stood in the rain near a Cougar Mountain trailhead Sunday afternoon and shook his head.

	Michael Schreck was likely wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. After so much time in the wet woods, hypothermia is a concern.

For the third straight day, King County search and rescue teams combed an 11-square-mile area, desperately searching for Michael Schreck -- the Issaquah man and father of two teenagers who left for a Friday morning run and never returned.

Searchers brought dogs, horses and twice scanned the area with heat sensors by helicopter. But early Sunday evening, they seemed to have no more solid leads than they did two days earlier, and Linde looked at a Cougar Mountain map as though it were a Rubik's Cube.

"This guy just disappeared," he said.

Schreck, 47, left home about 7:15 a.m. Friday to go to his favorite wooded running trails, police said. His wife called police about 11 p.m. when she hadn't heard from him. His Ford Explorer was found locked at the Red Town trailhead.

"We know there's nothing sinister going on; we just know he's not with us," the man's younger brother, Joe Schreck, said, echoing police statements. "This has been very hard for the family because there has been no closure."

Rescue teams continued throughout the weekend, with more than 100 people searching Saturday and about half that many on Sunday. Search dogs had covered most of the trails before dawn Saturday, and by Sunday afternoon they had given up on the obvious routes because they'd been over them so many times.

As of 9 p.m. Sunday, the search operation was suspended, Linde said. Detectives will now take over the effort as a missing persons case, he said.

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Joe Schreck, brother of the missing man, is comforted by friends and family members as they wait at a Cougar Mountain park trailhead.

Cougar Mountain is peppered with mines -- a remnant from the century before 1963, when the Eastside had a bustling coal industry -- and searchers initially thought Schreck might have fallen into one.

But a former Cougar Mountain park employee who mapped the mines searched them over the weekend and found no trace of Schreck, police said.

Most areas along the 52 maintained trails in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park are not lined with steep inclines.

Searchers who examined the areas that are said they did not find signs someone had slipped off the trails.

Police said Schreck, a Spokane native who moved from Texas in 2003, did not tell his wife exactly where he was going before making the roughly five-mile drive from his Issaquah home.

His family believes he was wearing running shorts and a sweatshirt.

"He didn't have any health issues abnormal for a 47-year-old," Linde said. "Schreck's family said he had asthma and some arthritis but that was it."

Schreck's family didn't say much Sunday, except that he is an avid runner who goes to the trails a few times a week for runs of up to a couple hours.

Earlier this year, Schreck became a manager at a local pharmaceutical company, his brother said.

As the family waited, they shifted between an area near Schreck's SUV and an off-duty Metro bus, where a King County chaplain consoled them near the back of the bus.

"I went up there and walked around for four or five hours this morning and it's just a jungle," Joe Schreck said, fighting back tears.

"There's lots and lots of underbrush."

King County search dogs picked up a few scents Sunday morning but those led to other hikers, searcher Kevin London said.

"We've done everything we can and we're coming up empty-handed," Linde said.

The searchers' main concern Sunday was that Schreck may have hypothermia after being wet in the woods for more than two days.

"But I've been on other searches where people with hypothermia have been found several days later," London said, "so there's always hope."

IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION

If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Michael Schreck, contact the King County Sheriff's Office at (206) 296-3311. The line is open 24 hours a day.