I wanted to include this case, not only because I can't make any sense of it, but because Hildegard went missing only months before I began writing Clusters. To add to the strangeness of that, she went missing at Wenatchee Lake, Washington, the exact same location that my book begins in. I didn't know of her disappearance at the time, but it's important to understand that one of the reasons I included Wenatchee Lake in my book was because David Paulides indicated the Pacific Northwest as being one of the major clusters.
If you view his map of the cases, sure enough, Washington and Idaho seem to be a hot bed of activity.
Patrick Hutchison, journalist for the Seattle Times, wrote an article on Hildegards disappearance. I've included a portion of that here, but recommend looking it up on Google. It's one of the first articles that pulls up when you search Hildegard Hendrickson:
On the eastern slopes of the Central Cascades, the last traces of snow are melting away and the tiny, delicate heads of morel mushrooms are pushing up through carpets of pine needles to greet the beginning of summer. Their emergence marks the start of one of the most prized mushroom-foraging times of the year, drawing hundreds of recreational and commercial mushroom pickers onto narrow Forest Service roads, hiking trails, and ORV paths to harvest their share of the venerable fungi. But this year, those passionate foragers will miss an ally, a teacher, and a friend, because last June 8, Hildegard Hendrickson, the godmother of Washington mushroom hunting, ventured among the burnt remains of a pine forest looking for morels and vanished.
I learned about Hendrickson's disappearance in late April. I was researching a story on mushroom foraging--a seemingly fun hobby, the perfect combination of hiking, treasure hunting and cooking. After only a few minutes of researching how one might get involved, I came across the Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS), a nonprofit founded in 1964 that's now one of the largest mushroom societies in the country. The society runs mushroom identification, or ID, clinics on Monday nights during the two prime mushroom seasons--starting in April and September--at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture. They provide novices and experts alike the opportunity to talk shop and have their mushrooms identified for free. Identification of mushrooms is of vital importance: Thousands of species exist, many are poisonous, and some that look identical to their edible counterparts will kill you if ingested.
As I made plans to visit the clinic, one thing continued to catch my eye: the name "Hildegard Hendrickson ID Clinic." It sounded familiar, but I didn't know why. A quick Google search brought up images of an older woman with short, curly gray hair tucked beneath the band of a tan visor. Her face is wrinkled and smiling; in her hands is a giant mushroom. A memory came flooding in.
It was a balmy June afternoon in 2010. Friends and I found something unusual in the backyard of our house in north Seattle. Between two fruit trees--which always managed to drop an impressive, and at times annoying, number of plums onto the scrappy patch of grass we called a yard--we found mushrooms: tan, phallic, brainy, and large. They were morels--one of the most sought-after mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest and beyond--but we didn't know that then. A few minutes of Internet research led me to the PSMS and a phone number. When I called, Hendrickson answered.
She told me to pick the mushrooms and stop by her house, just a few blocks away. I found her in her garden, watering roses. She greeted me warmly, offered me icewater, and immediately identified the mushrooms as morels--one of which, she told me beaming, was the largest she'd ever seen. We had a pleasant conversation; I gave her the monster morel for one of her classes; and we parted ways. The interaction lasted 15 minutes, but it stayed with me.
The ID clinics were officially named after her this year, and scrolling through the PSMS website, I learned why: She was a longtime member who, tragically, went missing while on a hunt for morels, the same mushrooms she identified from my yard that June afternoon.
On Saturday, June 8, 2013, Hendrickson drove east from Everett on US 2 in her green Ford Focus, arriving at the Minnow Creek Trailhead near Basalt Peak in the early afternoon. Her drive up Chikamin Ridge Road to the Minnow Creek trailhead would have been a bumpy one. The narrow gravel Forest Service road would have just been rid of the last hangings-on of winter snow patches, leaving everything underneath muddy and soft. The year before, fires had raged through this area. Though it is extremely difficult to forecast the locations of wild mushroom patches, morels often grow in areas that have suffered wildfires. Normally much harder to find and beloved for their dense, meaty texture and rich flavor, fire-burn morel patches are like pots of gold at the end of a smoky rainbow.
According to police case files, at the trailhead Hendrickson talked to Seattle cardiologist Dr. Anthony Okos. He told Chelan County detectives that he'd tried to advise Hendrickson that the trail was quite steep and that she may want to reconsider hiking up it--a reasonable suggestion from a doctor who saw a 79-year-old woman about to tackle a rather challenging trail. Little did he know that Hendrickson, a regular picker, hiked several times a week. According to several family members and friends who have been to the trail, it wouldn't have been a problem for her.
Off she set on the immediately inclined Minnow Creek Trail, leaving her car parked just off the road. At approximately 1:30 p.m., two separate witnesses, a hiker and a Forest Service ranger, came upon Hendrickson about halfway up the trail, picking morels just a few dozen feet from the established path. They were the last people to see her.
She wasn't reported missing until three days later, when a fellow mushroom hunter, Igor Malcevski, noticed the car had been parked in the same spot for several days. (Hendrickson was completely independent. It wasn't unusual for her sons not to talk to her for a week or more.) Upon closer inspection, Malcevski saw that the doors were unlocked and that there was a purse inside. Thinking the car's owner might be in some sort of trouble, he looked in the purse for identification, and immediately recognized Hendrickson from her driver's license. He called 911 and reported that Hildegard Hendrickson may be in trouble.
Paulides mentions that he too has asked for case files on this. Paulides goes on to mention in his book, The Devil's in the Detail, that Hildegard never left her car out of site when she went mushroom hunting. This would make sense when you see that her car was left unlocked with her personal items in plain sight.
There were many attempts at finding Hildegard and at one point, searchers smelled something 'foul'. It's never mentioned if this 'foul smell' was thought to be a decomposing body or something else, but regardless, Hildegard has never been found - even with blood hounds searching.
"The search team involved five different search teams, two helicopters, three bloodhounds, and an army of volunteer searchers, who altogether hunted more than 2,500 hours. High-probability areas were scoured up to eight times. Chelan County Sheriff's Deputy Gene Ellis would later call it the largest search effort he had seen in his 24-year career with the department. The result of their work? Nothing. No clues, no leads, no suspects, not a trace of Hendrickson." - Seattle Times
Some people came to the conclusion that it was foul play. If it were foul play, where's the evidence? Why did they leave her things in the car? What would they want with a 79 year old woman?
Since this is a recent case, SAR teams continue to use the case for search practice. Which means they're continuously actively searching for Hildegard and/or any evidence that may lead to answers.
Hauntingly, Paulides ends the chapter on Hildegard with the solemn words, "Don't ever hike or go into the woods alone."