Saved by Facebook: Hiker rescued after 911 dispatchers use social network to find him

When a 911 call got cut off, dispatchers used Facebook to help locate an injured hiker.

On Sunday afternoon, 41-year-old California hiker Ryan Pritchard slipped on a loose rock and fell 150 feet down a cliff, landing in a tree in the Putah Creek State Wildlife Area near Lake Barryessa, about 30 miles from his home in Sacramento. 

Pritchard’s eldest son, Devon, 18, had already returned to the car to put away their hiking gear. His younger son, Jake, 11, descended the cliff and used his dad’s cellphone to call 911. The call was disconnected before he could give the California Highway Patrol dispatcher their location. 

Jake tried to call again. Again, the call failed. 

“It was kind of scary because we were at a loss,” dispatcher Sheri Speakman told ABC News. “We had nothing.”

“The danger was that the tree would give away and he would fall to his death,” CHP officer and paramedic Ben Schmidt told the Sacramento Bee.

Dispatchers’ only clue to their location was the cellphone tower that the call came through — about 30 miles away from the remote trail where the Pritchards were hiking. 

"Because it was in our jurisdiction, they relayed it to us," Deputy Daryl Snedeker, spokesman for the Solano County Sheriff’s Department, told Reuters. "Our dispatchers took the information and began to work together to try to determine where the subject was."

Fortunately, dispatch trainee Breanna Martinez had an idea: She Googled Pritchard’s name and found his LinkedIn Page, which led her to his Facebook page. 

"I scrolled down and the very first post was a picture of his two sons and behind him was the lake — Lake Berryessa,” Martinez told CBS Sacramento. “And it just said, ‘Hiking the Blue Ridge Trail today.'"

Using this new information, the dispatchers were able to send a CHP rescue helicopter crew to the area. The crew found the remote trail, spotted Pritchard, and airlifted him to safety before darkness fell. 

“Imagine a cliff with a tree on it,” said Schmidt. “The tree was holding us there. He fell through the tree and the bigger branches caught him. We were working there on the cliff, standing on these branches. It was a kind of precarious situation. That is what made it kind of a challenge to get him packaged in the litter.”

The hiker was treated for several broken bones, a head injury and a broken jaw at the UC Davis Medical Center.

Yesterday, he was able to head home where he'll face "a long period of recuperating," his fiancée, Bella Reed — who also contributed to the rescue by sending dispatchers the location information Pritchard sent her before the accident — wrote on Facebook. 

“I am really impressed by this. I’m so proud of them, taking the initiative and solving the problem,” said the dispatchers’ boss, Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara. “And if you have to come up with a new way of doing it, that’s just outstanding.”