Smith: Monday was Santa Rosa rescue day at Yosemite National Park

Calls for help set Amy Carpenter and Chase Hensley of Santa Rosa running to help a rescued Yosemite National Park hiker, initially spotted by a Santa Rosa family, on Monday.|

A woman’s calls for help set Amy Carpenter and Chase Hensley to running in Yosemite National Park on Monday.

They stepped into a shaded boulder field east of the base of Lower Yosemite Fall to find a family of four aiding a muddied, bloodied, bruised and weak young man - the UC Santa Barbara student who’d been lost in the park for two days and two nights.

Carpenter used her cellphone to call 911. She and Hensley, her boyfriend, assisted the family - doctors Don and Cherie Green and their children, David and Sophia - as they warmed Mic Dahl and offered him water and assurance.

“We were really worried that he was not going to make it,” Carpenter said. Though he was nearly incoherent, she recalled, “When Chase asked him if he would like water, he said, ‘Yes, please.’ It was so sweet.”

Soon after the professionals arrived and relieved the good Samaritans, Carpenter and Hensley spoke with Cherie Green, who’d called out for help, and her husband and kids.

It was then the finders and initial rescuers of Mic Dahl discovered that they’re all from Santa Rosa.

Don and Cherie Green are both Kaiser doctors in the city. Carpenter is the technology coordinator for the Piner-Olivet Union School District and Hensley teaches P.E. at Mark West Charter School.

How fortunate that the two hiking parties met where, when and how they did. Not they await good news on Mic’s recovery.

_____

THE PHOTO on Facebook is wrenching.

An adolescent girl holds up a handwritten sign that reads:

“My name is Charisma. I am being bullied at Windsor Middle School. Share this and make it go viral so maybe I will stop being bullied everyday.”

The posting has brought so many calls of concern to Windsor Middle School in Windsor that its assistant principal, Ed Longnecker, phoned The Press Democrat to point out that the Windsor Middle School that Charisma attends is in New York state.

I see from Facebook comments that Charisma’s plea for help also has stirred alarm at a Windsor Middle School in Colorado.

It’s of some relief that the child isn’t being tormented in Sonoma County. But it shouldn’t happen anywhere.

_____

MARILYN KENTZ is the local treasure who co-starred in TV’s “The Mommies” and now rifts on the myriad delights of becoming an AARP-aged baby boomer.

A performance of her comedy and music stage show at 7 p.m. Friday at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa will benefit the North Bay Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Tickets are $25 and will be sold at the door.

Marilyn calls her show, “Will I Ever Wear a Bikini Again?” For more information, Google “rhetorical question.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.