Aerial Search for Family Suspended

After an intensive 16-day search, the Civil Air Patrol has called off its hunt for a Thousand Oaks family that has been missing since its plane failed to return from a family reunion in Utah.

Air Force officials decided Tuesday to suspend the Civil Air Patrol’s search for former Thousand Oaks Planning Commissioner K. Reed Harrison, wife Judith, and their 18-year-old daughter, Julie, unless new clues turn up on the family’s whereabouts, Civil Air Patrol Capt. Ray Tippo said.

The Civil Air Patrol is the volunteer search-and-rescue arm of the Air Force.

“We’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of effort in looking for them,” Tippo said. “There’s no point in having our pilots up there, our aircraft up there until there’s something more tangible to look for.”

The massive search began July 26, the day after the Harrisons’ Beechcraft Bonanza failed to return from Roosevelt, Utah, to the Camarillo Airport as scheduled.

During the search, volunteer Civil Air Patrol pilots from Utah, California, Arizona and Nevada scoured the countryside between Roosevelt and Camarillo.

In California alone, hundreds of pilots worked a total of 744 shifts, logging 1,150 hours in the search, Tippo said.

“I just feel let down,” Tippo said. “We spent a lot of time on it. It is frustrating at this point that we haven’t been able to find them.”

Harrison family members reached at their Thousand Oaks home Tuesday declined to comment on the decision.