After the Deluge : Derring-Do in a Baja Rescue Retrieves 2 Stranded by Storms : Charter pilot plucks two sisters stuck for nine days on banks of swollen river and delivers them safely across the border.

For Laura Wadhams and her sister, Pamela Muckleroy, deliverance from flood-ravaged Baja California Norte came on the wings of a plane chartered by their father, Golden West College math professor, John Wadhams.

Stranded with hundreds of other U.S. tourists in the town of Vicente Guerrero, north of San Quintin, about 200 miles south of the border, the two young women were relieved to see a jaunty pilot emerge Sunday from the aircraft with hamburgers and soft drinks.

Laura Wadhams, a 21-year-old student at Cal State Sonoma, and Muckleroy, a 29-year-old elementary school teacher in Ukiah, saw a 10-day snorkeling vacation along the Sea of Cortez turn into an 18-day ordeal. Cut off for nine days on the banks of a swollen river, the sisters were able to contact their family and let them know about their increasingly desperate predicament.

“People were beginning to panic,” Laura Wadhams said. “People’s tempers were getting short. There were no accurate weather reports. You have no idea what’s going on. There’s no way to wire money. When people are desperate, it’s hard to make rational decisions. . . . You’re stuck down there with no idea when you’re going to to get out.”

Over the weekend, the situation for the hundreds of tourists stranded in the area was becoming increasingly anxious. Food was running out, although the Mexican Army was providing some, Wadhams said.

With little more than a single outhouse in the area, they were forced to use nearby fields. Before the river rose again, some people paid local farmers with tractors to tow them across, but bridges were washing out north of them, leaving their prospects in doubt.

John Wadhams learned of his daughters’ plight after their friend took a risk and swam across the swollen river and then made his way to Tijuana, where he called Garden Grove.

When the 53-year-old professor realized the seriousness of the situation, he said he began “laying out an alternative plan in case they needed to get out,” if the situation on the ground did not improve or if they got sick.

Wadhams contacted Martin Aviation at John Wayne Airport, which recommended Jack Jaax, who flies his six-passenger, twin engine Mitsubishi turboprop out of Calexico.

When his daughters reached him by phone from Vicente Guerrero, Wadhams said, “it was up to them to decide if they wanted to leave their car and fly out. . . . They said yes.”

Jaax, who Wadhams described as “a bush pilot dream come true,” reminiscent of the old Sunday newspaper cartoon strip character “Smilin’ Jack,” assured Wadhams that for $800 he could navigate both the bad weather and the Mexican bureaucracy.

On Sunday, right on schedule, Jaax landed at a military field in San Quintin, where Laura Wadhams and Muckleroy were waiting with a Wyoming couple with a 2-year-old, and two men they invited along. All agreed to share the cost of the flight. Wadhams’ Volkswagen van was left with a rancher.

Laura Wadhams said she was “ecstatic” to see the pilot offering cheeseburgers and drinks.

“He had a great air of professionalism and confidence,” she said.

Jaax, 50, said in a telephone interview from Calexico Tuesday that after 25 years of flying in Mexico he “didn’t see anything unusual” about the assignment, saying it was “just a normal day. . . . In Mexico, we can get just about any job done.”

In the past, he said, his charter customers have included Gov. Pete Wilson, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Mother Teresa. Several days before the flight, Jaax said, he flew the governor of Baja California Norte from Calexico to Tijuana to inspect flood damage after the Mexican military declined to make the flight.

Between 20 to 30 concerned U.S. parents contacted him about evacuating their children during the floods, Jaax said, but they decided to stay put and wait for the Mexican army to get things moving. If the situation had deteriorated, “nobody was going to be left stranded,” he said.

If necessary, Jaax said, he and a fellow pilot “could have pulled out 80 to 100 a day.” In general, he said, “we’re not irresponsible, but we will take a calculated risk when some lives are at stake.”

Jaax said he got permission to land at the military field from authorities in Ensenada and loaded up with several hundred dollars in food to distribute to soldiers in San Quintin. From there, he flew to Mexicali, and then on to Calexico, where John Wadhams met his daughters, then drove them to Garden Grove. Muckleroy left for Northern California Tuesday. Laura Wadhams is remaining in Garden Grove to see if the floodwaters recede enough to return for her van.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that it was a good thing to get them out of there,” John Wadhams said.

Other Orange County residents had equally dramatic tales to tell, although police in San Quintin reported Monday that all the stranded travelers had gotten out by Monday.

Carol Lobo of Laguna Niguel was concerned about her son, Christopher, who was stuck in the San Quintin-Vicente Guerrero area last weekend. Christopher, a 27-year-old supervisor at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point, had been gone 11 days, since last Sunday, following a camping and diving trip with four friends to Loreto.

Late Monday afternoon, Christopher called his mother from Tijuana and he was back home in Orange County by evening. In an interview Tuesday, Christopher Lobo said he never feared for his safety, largely because he and his friends had plenty of food and camping equipment and because they were able to sleep in Lobo’s full-size pickup truck.

For him, Lobo said, the experience was only “a big inconvenience.”

And not everyone is back yet from Baja.

James DuBois of Capistrano Beach said he spoke with his son, Douglas, 35, a junior high school teacher, Tuesday morning. The younger DuBois was still stranded in Loreto after a camping trip to Cabo San Lucas.

But DuBois said his son and a friend, who were traveling in a Jeep Cherokee, were “in good shape, no problems.”

In contrast to the situation in the San Quintin area, DuBois said there was plenty of food in Loreto, and his son’s credit card was being honored. His only concern, Douglas DuBois said, was getting back to his school in Los Angeles by mid-February, when the term begins.

Times staff writers Tina Griego and Dave Galloway contributed to this story.