$10,000 Reward Offered After Searches Fail to Find Doctor

An anonymous donor has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Dr. Steven Ray Stoltz, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center surgical intern who has been missing since setting out on a mountain bike ride Aug. 4.

Los Angeles police announced the reward Sunday after weekend searches again turned up no trace of Stoltz, 25, an experienced bicyclist and triathlon competitor who was believed to have been heading into the rugged Topanga Canyon area.

On Saturday, teams of volunteers combed bike and hiking paths along the Santa Monica Mountains in the western San Fernando Valley, said Beverley Hartunian, the mother of another physician at Cedars-Sinai who is helping to coordinate search efforts. “They didn’t find anything,” she said.

Stoltz’s father, Dennis, flew to Los Angeles from Rapid City, S.D., early last week to aid the police investigation but returned home over the weekend to attend a prayer service for his son, Hartunian said. “He was exhausted. He had to be with his family for a while,” she said.

Police on Friday searched the Topanga Canyon area using a helicopter equipped with an infrared sensing device.

The heat-sensing device can detect the warmth of a human body and is used routinely for searches in remote areas.

Volunteer searchers and police have concentrated efforts in the Topanga Canyon area because the South Dakota native had visited there twice since arriving in Los Angeles about seven weeks ago after graduating from medical school in St. Louis. Flyers with Stoltz’s photograph have been distributed in the Westside neighborhood where he lives.

Neither Stoltz nor his bike has been located since he departed Aug. 4. Police have not yet concluded that he met with foul play, although they are investigating the possibility.