Jakhobi Hale walked away from his grandparents' Gold Hill property near Darrington on May 16 carrying almost nothing: an olive-green rain jacket, a machete, a granola bar, and two mandarin oranges. The 21-year-old left his cellphone behind before setting out on what he told family would be a short day hike, and he has not been seen since. More than three months later, his mother is still pleading with the public and law enforcement for any information that could help bring him home.
According to FOX 13 Seattle, Hale had told his family he planned to return before dark to watch a movie and eat popcorn. Because he left his phone at the property, investigators had no cell-tower data or GPS trail to follow once he failed to come home, a gap that has shaped nearly every stage of the search since. Family members and wilderness search investigators are now asking local landowners, hunters, and hikers to check trail cameras, outbuildings, and property in the area, hoping those checks could turn up clues that lead to Hale.
Snohomish County Search and Rescue led an intensive seven-day sweep of the area immediately after Hale went missing before scaling the operation down, the outlet reports. Search dogs picked up a brief scent line north of the property along the old Mountain Loop Highway and near a cell tower, but the only physical trace recovered across the entire search area was a possible machete cut found on forest vegetation.
A Trail-Camera Image Investigators Still Can't Explain
One of the few potential leads to emerge is a grainy trail-camera image captured at 1:50 p.m. on May 16, showing two unidentified individuals in the area around the time Hale disappeared. Per the same FOX 13 account, that image remains the only known visual record of anyone other than searchers near Gold Hill during the window when Hale vanished, and authorities have publicly urged the two people captured in it to come forward.
The terrain complicating the search is itself part of the danger. Gold Hill is a heavily forested mountain zone east of Darrington, and the surrounding wilderness along North Sauk River Road includes steep ridgeline ravines, swift stretches of the Sauk River, and seven abandoned mines. Family members have requested specialized drone equipment to inspect those mines, according to the station's report, since they remain unsearched by ground crews.
Volunteers Step In After Official Search Scales Back
Once official agency operations wound down, Hale's mother organized a community-led search on July 11 at Darrington Town Hall. The gathering drew local hunters, mushroom foragers, civilian mountaineers, and two former Army Rangers, all working to cover high-elevation ridgelines that fell outside the original seven-day search perimeter, the article notes.
That volunteer push has come at a personal cost. In August, after three months of coordinating searches on her own, Hale's mother, Autumn Hale, launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover search expenses, private investigator fees, and public outreach materials. As reported by KIRO 7, Autumn Hale said she took over coordinating search efforts herself once official emergency responders concluded their active phase of the operation.
Why Search Costs Often Fall on Families
Under Washington's RCW 38.52.400, county sheriffs are the officials statutorily responsible for organizing and executing local search and rescue operations, and Snohomish County's sheriff-led unit is a busy one: it logged 374 missions and consultations in 2024, backed by the more than 400 members of Snohomish County Volunteer Search and Rescue, who contributed over 15,000 volunteer hours that year, according to figures published by the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office also operates SnoHawk 10, a hoist-equipped Bell UH-1H helicopter used for backcountry extractions and search passes over terrain too rugged to reach on foot, per Vertical Magazine.
Wilderness search and rescue provided by sheriff's offices and volunteer units is delivered free of charge to missing people and their families under Washington guidelines, funded instead through county budgets, volunteer contributions, and public donations, per Klipsun Magazine. But that no-cost structure typically applies to the active, agency-led phase of an operation. Once official search efforts wind down without a resolution, as they did in Hale's case, the burden of sustaining the search — coordinating volunteers, hiring investigators, printing outreach materials — often shifts to families like the Hales.
For now, the identity of the two people in the trail-camera photo remains unknown, and whether drones will ever be sent into the abandoned mines east of Darrington is still an open question. Hale's mother continues to ask anyone with information, trail-camera footage, or access to outbuildings and property in the Gold Hill area to come forward.
