Lost in the Himalayas : Family Waits for Word on Teacher in Missing Plane

Nighttime is the worst for Jonas and Judy Sidrys.

That’s when the visions come hardest, the haunting images of Jonas’ sister, Vida, stranded or even dead in the brutal Himalaya Mountains where a Pakistani airliner carrying her and 53 others vanished last week.

“That’s when it’s daytime over there, and they’re conducting the search,” said Jonas, a doctor from Santa Monica who, with his wife, anxiously awaits word of his sister’s status. “That’s when you could get a call saying she’s dead. It’s almost impossible to sleep.”

Massive Search

But despite the fears, the telephone call has yet to come. Vida Sidrys, 35, a Santa Monica teacher, remains one of the 54 targets of a massive search in the northern mountain ranges of Pakistan.

She has been missing since the Friday morning, when the twin-engine passenger plane that was to carry her from the Himalayan tourism hub of Gilgit to a vacation spot in Islamabad, Pakistan, disappeared from radar screens.

The Pakistani government immediately launched a search for the aging Pakistan International Airlines plane and its passengers, which included five infants, but has thus far failed to find any traces.

Authorities said they have no idea why the plane went down.

Heavy rains have slowed the search parties, which are using two large air force planes, helicopters and a small search plane to scan the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges.

“We know they are doing what they can,” said Judy Sidrys on Wednesday, “but it’s just so frustrating. It’s been six days now, and we still have not heard anything.”

Still, hope persists.

“She might have survived,” said Jonas, who lives in an apartment downstairs from Vida’s. “Vida is very athletic, very healthy. She also has some experience in backpacking. She would be able to survive in the outdoors.”

Judy said her sister-in-law is also an avid cyclist who rode her bicycle to Marymont High School, where she teaches Western civilization classes.

“She didn’t even own a car,” Judy said. “She just rode every day, and that’s a pretty long way from here.”

The couple also described Vida as a seasoned globe-trotter.

“She is really interested in exotic places and cultures and she likes to go to them,” Judy said. “Each summer she plans trips to places like Bali, Nepal or India. That’s why she wanted to go to Pakistan.”

Judy said she last talked to her sister-in-law about two days before she was to fly from Los Angeles to Gilgit.

She said the teacher had just returned from visiting family members in Michigan and was packing for her vacation overseas as they talked.

“She was really excited about this trip,” she said. “At first, she didn’t think she’d have the money for it, but she came up with it. She couldn’t wait to go.”

But Jonas was wary of the trip.

“When I saw her itinerary, I was concerned because there was so much flight time, so much time . . . in the air,” Jonas said. “She was flying over the Himalayas and that’s a dangerous part of the world. There was just too much of an opportunity for something to go wrong.”

Obviously, something did go wrong. But government officials from both the United States and Pakistan have yet to figure out what.

Find Aircraft

“Right now the Pakistani government is just trying to find the plane and hope they are alive,” said Philip Covington, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department. “I don’t think they are operating under the premise that anyone is dead.

“Of course, the terrain is brutal, and it would be difficult to survive.”

Although they acknowledge that the Pakistanis are doing all they can to find the aircraft, the Sidrys family still wants the hunt intensified.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Paul Sidrys, 26, another of Vida’s brothers, said from the family home in Streator, Ill. “But it’s hard to judge when you are halfway around the world.”

Judy said her father-in-law has hinted at obtaining a visa to visit Pakistan just to be close to the search.

“And a friend of (Vida) offered to go over there and help,” she said. “But there’s not a whole lot more that can be done. We just wish there were.”

Jonas said he also voiced his concern to the office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) in an effort to expedite the search.

But for now, the family concedes, there is little they can do to bring Vida home. They have resigned themselves to spending each day waiting pensively.

And each night in fear.