Hering found perfect wilderness town to hide
By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published November 17, 2008 at 9:34 p.m.
Updated November 17, 2008 at 9:42 p.m.
Matt McClain / The Rocky
A fisherman navigates foggy waters Monday at the Port Angeles Yacht Club in Port Angeles, Wash. The fog-shrouded town was the safe haven of Lance Cpl. Lance Hering prior to his arrest Sunday.
Photo by Courtesy of KDVR
Lance Hering police mugs
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Lance Hering spent his final days of freedom among rolling woods and smothering fog that swoops in without warning to obscure hillside homes in the extreme northwest corner of the United States.
Hering, 23, was a long way from Eldorado Canyon State Park near Boulder, where he was reported missing Aug. 30, 2006, after a rock-climbing fall — a story that authorities later concluded was an elaborate ruse.
He was even farther from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and his former life in the U.S. Marine Corps, which had included multiple tours of duty in Iraq.
His wavy blond hair hung past his shoulders, his high, tight Marine buzz-cut long since grown out. A scraggly beard covered his face.
It was the kind of look that might not have been noticed in a city of roughly 18,000 people, where logging and shipping tourism all feed the local economy, where the police department has 32 officers, where the county courthouse has no metal detectors.
It was here, at the W.R. Fairchild International Airport on the west edge of town, that Port Angeles police officers swooped in Sunday afternoon and arrested both the Marine and his father, Lloyd Hering, of Boulder.
The arrests answered the immediate question — where was Lance Tyler Hering? — but didn't solve the mystery of where he had been for the last 26 months, of what he had been doing, of how it was that he came to be here, where fall colors — ambers and golds and crimsons — dappled the hillsides Monday.
A couple months ago, authorities searching for Hering had zeroed in on this area after a tip that he might be hiding out in Olympic National Park. The park is almost a million acres of forests, rugged canyons and sub-alpine meadows, a place where it would be easy for a young man to lose himself. And it's surrounded, in places, by both forest and wilderness land.
"We have a lot of access points around the park to the backcountry, to the wilderness," said Kevin Hendricks, chief ranger in the park. "There are many, many roads that access park trails."
It's the kind of place where one could survive.
"It's a rainy environment — there would be ample fresh water around," Hendricks said.
Still, Hendricks had no reports of Hering having been reported in the area, and no indications that park rangers had come across him during their patrols.
Deputy Police Chief Brian Smith also said it was not clear how long Hering had been in the area.
"That's still under investigation," he said.
As dusk settled in Monday evening, a few sailors worked on their rigging in the Port Angeles Harbor.
Just beyond their boats, a fog bank rolled across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, which separates this corner of Washington from Canada, a place where some young men of another generation went to escape another war.
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November 18, 2008
8:18 a.m.
Suggest removal
gr8fun4me writes:
In reality he never should have been put in that situation of heading back to Iraq for another tour of duty. The administration really should re-invoke the draft and everyone has to serve for at least 2 years. No one gets out of it because they're rich or connected. Maybe that would stop wars that really shouldn't be fought for no reason. Everyone has a stake in it.
I've served my country for 4 years plus 2 years inactive. I don't blame him for not wanting to go back. He went about it the wrong way.
November 18, 2008
10:39 a.m.
Suggest removal
fuzzyjim writes:
I don't blame him for not wanting to go back either. But he signed up for the military so doesn't have the luxury of refusing to go. Still, poor guy, it's gonna be a drag for a while.
November 18, 2008
11:05 a.m.
Suggest removal
dftoad writes:
Port Angeles has US Border Patrol cops that in 1999 caught the terrorist who had the assignment to bomb LA International Airport, and Coast Guard and US Navy patrols on the Strait and Puget Sound to protect some of the Navy's most secure facilities. It not where I'd go to hide.