When an 88-year-old hiker got separated from her companions at Mount Burdell Preserve and wandered off-trail into terrain with few landmarks, dispatchers, trackers, and nearly 50 search volunteers struggled for hours to pin down exactly where she was. It took a 17-year-old high school senior, patiently walking her through her own iPhone settings over a repeatedly dropping phone call, to finally get a usable GPS fix and point rescuers to her location.
The hiker was found uninjured on November 10 at Mount Burdell Preserve, near Novato, according to Outside. How she became separated from her hiking companions remains unclear, but at some point after getting off the trail, she headed downhill, deeper into the preserve's rolling hills and scattered trees. Her companions tried to locate her themselves before calling for help.
A Search That Stalled Before It Started
Marin County Search and Rescue received the call around 2 p.m. and mobilized roughly 50 members to comb the preserve, the outlet reports. But conventional cellphone-tracking methods failed to locate her. Attempts using CalTopo and Apple's Find My Friends both came up empty, and 911 dispatchers who tried to pinpoint her position by phone had no luck either.
That is where Cody Davis, a 17-year-old search-and-rescue volunteer and high school senior, stepped in. Davis connected with the hiker over FaceTime and asked her to show him the terrain around her, questioning her about her surroundings in an effort to narrow down where she might be.
Teaching Tech Support Over a Dropping Call
The call kept dropping, and Davis had already spent roughly an hour and a half on the phone with her before he landed on a solution: using newer FaceTime features that let one participant remotely control another person's iPhone screen, with permission. Apple's own support documentation confirms that during a one-to-one FaceTime video or audio call, a participant can remotely control someone else's screen, or allow a trusted person to control theirs, per Apple Support. The feature requires both participants to be running iOS 18 or later, and the person sharing their screen must accept the request before the other participant can interact with it.
Davis said he had never remotely accessed another person's screen before, but found it easy to figure out how to use the technology once he tried, the outlet's report notes. He said the hiker was helpful and a good sport despite being unfamiliar with her own device, working with him as he patiently explained each step. Davis managed to access her screen, adjust several location settings, and retrieve her GPS coordinates using the Maps and Compass apps, then relayed those coordinates to search teams already combing the field.
Found Before the Line Reconnected
The FaceTime call disconnected shortly after Davis passed along the coordinates. By the time he reconnected with the hiker, rescuers had already located her, and Davis said he reconnected just as teams approached and watched the first team make contact with her on FaceTime. Marin County Search and Rescue located the woman around 4 p.m., helped her back to the trail, and she walked out with rescuers in good spirits. She had carried a charged phone and had cell service, and answered when rescuers called.
Marin SAR operations director Molly Williams credited Davis's persistence with helping searchers reach the woman sooner, telling the outlet that the team would have found her eventually, but that Cody's discovery helped them find her faster. Williams said the team accepts volunteers as young as 14, and that about a third or more of its members are high-school age and serve as full members who respond just like adults. The team published a report of the rescue mission on its Facebook page.
A Youth-Heavy Team With a Track Record
Marin SAR's roster of teenage volunteers is not a new development. A San Francisco Chronicle report described the team as the only one in the country with youth members on its Mountain Rescue Team, noting that youth and adult members go through the same extensive training and that the team mostly responds to calls involving missing children, missing adults with dementia, and injured hikers. The Mountain Rescue Association has reported that Marin SAR's youth members can take on responsibilities including leading trainings and serving as team leaders in the field, and the organization documented a mission in which a 16-year-old Marin SAR member, Kate Patterson, helped find a 71-year-old woman who had been missing for several days in Mendocino County.
Redwood Bark has reported that a Marin SAR unit leader once credited youth members as the team's top finders of missing people, and the outlet also documented a 2020 case in which young volunteer Quincy Webster helped find two senior citizens who had been lost for eight days in West Marin. Team-size figures vary across reports, with a 2023 Chronicle count putting the roster at 114 members including 40 youth volunteers, Redwood Bark citing 130 youth and adult volunteers, and the Mountain Rescue Association citing about 150 volunteers including roughly 40 active youth members.
What Davis Wants Hikers to Know
Davis advised hikers who lose their bearings to stay on established trails rather than head downhill, explaining that leaving the trail makes it harder for rescuers to find them, since search teams typically check trails first. He also recommended that hikers learn how to retrieve GPS coordinates from their phone's Maps or Compass app before heading out, so they can relay their location directly to emergency responders if something goes wrong.
Williams urged hikers to stay with their companions, particularly when group members move at different speeds, and noted that people often end up calling for a search after their phone battery dies or after using its flashlight for an extended period. Davis's 1,700-plus hours with Marin County Search and Rescue were recognized earlier this year as part of a Heart of Marin youth volunteer honor, according to Citizen Portal.
