Hope Fades After Search of Riverbanks for Man

They scoured the woodsy, rocky Santa Clara River banks all night and most of Tuesday with helicopters and floodlights in a futile search for 22-year-old Oscar Rodriguez of Diamond Bar, presumed dead in the wake of one of Southern California’s fiercest winter rainstorms.

And after the dozen Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and volunteers called off their two-mile-long search until today, when water levels near the Santa Clarita Valley community of Agua Dulce are expected to drop, Sheriff’s Sgt. Joseph Dymerski imparted blunt, but heartfelt words to Rodriguez’s mother and relatives:

“I’m sorry, but there’s no hope. If there was any hope--and we’ve talked to all the people who do this regularly--but nobody’s holding out any hope for your son, if he’s in the river.”

“But he might have walked out,” said Rodriguez’s mother, who declined to give her name. Her eyes were reddened from lack of sleep because of the family’s all-night vigil at a Soledad Canyon Road park, converted to a makeshift command post.

“If he walked out,” Dymerski said, “this is a very big valley, and we’d have to know where to look for him. If he’s at someone’s home, he will come home--to your home--and hopefully, it’ll be soon, and then we’ll have a very joyful reunion.”

Dymerski slowly shook his head. “But I can’t hold out much hope for you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

To the apparent consternation of Rodriguez’s family, who had brought some of the missing man’s clothing from home to the command post, deputies decided not to use tracking dogs in their search.

“He’s wet--he’s in the river, and dogs would lose the scent,” Dymerski told a reporter. “That’s what they do in the movies. Well, this isn’t the movies. If we thought he was alive, we’d have three or four dogs out there.”

What no one disputes is that Oscar Rodriguez knew the territory. On most weekends, Rodriguez, a 1988 Glendale High School graduate, drove his red 1989 Jeep Wrangler convertible to a friend’s property--a remote, brushy area alongside the river, off Soledad Canyon Road.

There, he joined friends to play “paint ball,” an increasingly popular make-believe war game in which combatants don camouflage fatigues and--with air rifles and air pistols--shoot grape-sized pellets of washable paint in assorted colors at each other. Rodriguez and his companions planned to compete in a tournament next month in San Diego, friends said.

But on Sunday, there were no organized “paint ball” games. Instead, Rodriguez and two male friends drove for fun along the rough-and-tumble banks of the river, which hadn’t yet filled up with the weekend’s torrential rains, sheriff’s deputies said.

But Rodriguez’s Jeep broke down, apparently from a ruptured oil pan. Unable to restart the Jeep, Rodriguez and his two friends went home Sunday night.

In Monday’s downpour, Rodriguez returned with two other male friends in hopes of retrieving his Jeep. But now, at 4 p.m., the river had become treacherous, spilling violently onto its banks--and suddenly the vehicle that took Rodriguez and his friends to the property got stuck in mud.

They pushed the vehicle out of trouble, Dymerski said, whereupon Rodriguez told his friends he was going to claim his Jeep, now parked in brushy terrain across the raging river.

“We’re not going back into the river,” his friends were quoted by Dymerski as saying.

“OK, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” said Rodriguez, who disappeared down the hill, apparently attempting to cross the river on foot.

His friends waited an hour for Rodriguez. Then they searched in vain for him. Finally, they telephoned the sheriff’s Antelope Valley Station, which at 8 p.m. Monday sent deputies and volunteers trained in search-and-rescue to the scene.

The only trace of Oscar Rodriguez--who worked with his parents, wholesalers of Bibles and other religious items--was his mud-splattered Jeep. Beneath the front bumper lay three plastic bottles emptied of 20-weight Chevron oil; on the front seat, a small cardboard box of paint ball pellets.

“You like to think you’re looking for somebody alive, but you really can’t be sure,” Sheriff’s Deputy Doug Duncan said at the command post, where Rodriguez’s parents and other relatives waited for the faintest glimmer of hope. But none came.

“I feel bad for the family,” Duncan said. “Not knowing must be . . . “

His voice stopped. He didn’t need to finish. The sorrowful eyes of Oscar Rodriguez’s mother said it for him, and for everyone there.

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