Hopes of Finding Missing Man Fade

It’s been more than a month since Bill Stephenson has heard from his son Michael, and now he wonders if he will ever see him again.

On July 4, Michael Stephenson, 44, of Ventura, set out on a camping vacation in the Nettle Creek area of Los Padres National Forest, north of Ojai. His truck was found in the area soon after by Forest Service employees, but Stephenson, a diabetic who needs regular doses of insulin, has not been heard from since he left, authorities say.

A daily aerial search by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department was called off Tuesday, authorities said. Stephenson’s father and stepmother, who live in Thousand Oaks, are worried about his welfare. “We have our hopes that he’s alive, but we kind of doubt it,” Bill Stephenson said.

Neither Bill, 65, nor Sandra, 60, are physically able to join in the search for their son, and both believe the authorities have done as much as they can to try to locate him.

As each day passes with no word about Michael’s whereabouts, the Stephensons say they are doing whatever they can to keep busy. “What else can we do?” Bill said.

Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation in Ventura, where Michael Stephenson worked as a counselor, said Thursday he was part of a search party that went into the brush Aug. 3 hoping to find signs of the missing man.

The terrain in the Nettle Creek area is steep in places, Reynolds said, but there are some trails. “Having been up there, I can say it’s tough to get off the trails,” he said. “The chaparral is so thick you’d need a machete to get through some of it.”

Reynolds characterized Stephenson’s situation as “bleak,” but he has no idea what might have happened to him.