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The search continues for an Ambler native who failed
to meet friends at the end of a snowboarding run at
an Oregon ski resort. Kate Svitek, 22, has been missing
since last Saturday. Her parents, Ellen and Frank Svitek,
flew Sunday night to the resort in Bend where their
daughter was last seen. Yesterday, they called for more
volunteers to aid in the search for their daughter.
Earlier in the week, they expressed their belief that
she was still alive.
"We know Katie will stay the course," Ellen
Svitek said, reading from a prepared statement Wednesday.
"We know that Katie would never leave us and we
will never leave her." Worshipers at the Sviteks'
synagogue, Congregation Beth Or in Spring House, added
special prayers for the 22-year-old's safe return during
their regular Friday night Shabbat services last night.
"She's a very sweet girl, they're a very close
family," said Elizabeth Hirsch, Beth Or executive
director. "We're all praying for her safe return."
Svitek, who graduated from Germantown Academy and last
year from the University of Vermont, was reported missing
last Saturday by snowboarding friends after she failed
to meet up with them at the base at Mount Bachelor,
near Bend, after a run earlier in the day, said a Mount
Bachelor spokeswoman. That night the search began, said
the spokeswoman, Molly Moloney.
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Volunteers; staff at Mount Bachelor, where Svitek works
as a ticket attendant; ski patrols; search-and-rescue
and search-dog teams from across the Northwest; and
helicopters have all contributed to the search, which
has been aided by mild weather on the mountain, Moloney
said.
"We've scoured the area where she was last seen,
literally did an inch-by-inch grid," she said.
Mount Bachelor is a volcano, where escaping hot air
creates wells into which Svitek may have fallen, she
said. Moloney and Hirsch said Svitek was an avid outdoorswoman
with wilderness experience and medical training. She
has completed National Outdoor Leadership School; traveled
to Patagonia, a rugged region at the southern tip of
South America popular with outdoors enthusiasts; and
was trained as a medical first responder, Moloney said.
According the Hirsch, Svitek dreamed of teaching children
about the outdoors. At the University of Vermont, she
majored in outdoor studies and minored in eco-tourism.
She traveled to Oregon to take a job in an outdoor school,
Hirsch said, but left the school for the resort when
the job was not what she had expected.
Moloney said that as many as 100 volunteers at a time
have helped search for Svitek. She said the decision
on how long to keep searching would be made on a day-to-day
basis. "We're just doing our best to go find her,"
she said.
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