A Michigan man who went missing while apparently hiking in the Mount Wilson area in the hills above Altadena was found by search crews using a drone Thursday and hoisted to safety.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials said earlier that Aleksander Novak Zemplinski, 43, had gone missing late Sunday, when he was believed to have been on Mount Wilson Red Box Road.
According to the sheriff’s Crescenta Valley station, somebody reported finding an abandoned vehicle that had apparently been parked at a turnout in the area for several days. Investigators found the vehicle Wednesday night, which was parked in “an unusual spot” and began conducting a search of the surrounding hillsides, to no avail.
On Thursday morning, the search was restarted with the help of a drone team, sheriff’s officials said. Around 10:30 a.m., the drone’s cameras spotted the missing man about 200 feet over the side of the road — awake but barely moving.
Ground crews were able to reach the location identified by the drone and aided the man, who “may have been in the elements for a couple days,” sheriff’s officials said on X, formerly Twitter.
He was later hoisted out of the area by a sheriff’s helicopter crew and taken to a hospital in moderate condition, according to the sheriff’s department.