News

It was a moment celebrated across the world on Sunday: The “absolute miracle” of finding two young sisters, just 8 and 5, huddled under a huckleberry bush in the woods near Richardson Grove two days after they were last seen in front of their home.

Nowhere was the moment expressed more vividly than the faces of Leia and Caroline’s parents, the girls themselves and the men and women who helped bring them home safe and sound at the moment of the reunion (captured by local photographer Mark McKenna.)


As Sheriff William Honsal said at a press conference that day, these girls “definitely have a survivor story to tell.”

After the ordeal of spending two nights out in the woods alone, they were — the girls’ mother Misty Carrico says in a GoFundMe post — “cold, tired but alive.”

And, just as a community of rescuers — some 15 agencies from 17 counties — worked together to reunite Leia and Caroline with their family, a similar spirit of support has come together to help the Carricos raise $10,000 to help repair  damage done to the rural roads of their home and their neighbors by the rescue effort.

Meanwhile, several of the agencies that helped find the girls are volunteer based and some are donation dependent. Links to some of their websites can be found below for those interested in volunteering or helping to fund their work.
Piercy Volunteer Fire Department
Redway Fire
Southern Humboldt Technical Rescue
Humboldt County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Posse
Salmon Creek Fire