Woman, Children Recovering After Rescue From Mojave Desert

A woman and her two children were recovering in their Edwards Air Force Base home Sunday, three days after getting lost in the Mojave Desert while searching for the hard-to-find back entrance to the base.

The mother and 22-month-old boy were hospitalized for hypothermia after they were found Saturday morning, having spent two nights wandering through the desert in subfreezing temperatures. The child suffered frostbite on his extremities and there were fears that amputation might be required.

Instead, mother and son were sent home to be reunited with the unidentified woman’s husband, an airman with the base’s test squadron.

Base spokesman George Fox said the family declined to be interviewed by the media and asked that their names be withheld.

“We have to respect the father’s wishes,” he said.

It is unclear why the woman’s husband did not alert authorities when his wife and children did not return home from a day trip to Barstow.

The woman told authorities that she, her son and teenage daughter ran out of gas about 8 p.m. Thursday at 200th Street and Avenue B, about 25 miles northeast of Lancaster, an isolated area of the high desert dotted with shrubs and Joshua trees. They set out on foot, heading north through the desert in search of help.

When the mother became exhausted, she stayed behind with the child, but the 13-year-old kept going.

She walked 15 to 20 miles, circling Rogers Dry Lake, until she was found by a security guard 24 hours later on the northern side of the lake bed, near the NASA complex. She was covered in mud and exhausted but in good health, Fox said.

Fox added that finding the way to the base’s back entrance is not a task to be undertaken at night by anyone who doesn’t know the roads.

“Unless you know that area, it’s really hard to find your way in the daytime. At night it’s even harder,” Fox said. “This is an isolated desert area. You can turn off many of those roads and drive into the desert.”

The way into the base’s south gate, referred to as the back gate, is a zigzag trip because of the desert’s dead-end roads, he said.

It involves taking 170th Street north off California 138, which runs east and west between Palmdale and San Bernardino, then Avenue C west. From there, motorists would take 140th Street north, then Avenue E west, then 120th Street north to the gate. There are only two small signs along the way and they are hard to see when driving down the unlit roads at night.

“How they got to 200th Street, I don’t know,” Fox said.

About 50 officers from the base and the Kern and Los Angeles County sheriff’s offices scoured the desert in a 13-hour search for the mother and toddler.

“A lot of it had to be done by foot because there are a lot of places out there you can’t reach by car,” Fox said.

He said that authorities contacted the father after the teenager was found and that he spent the night at the base’s police station until a helicopter spotted his wife about 9:15 a.m.

She led authorities to the young boy, whom she had wrapped in a blanket and left behind as she continued to search for help.