Frisco – Searchers drilled into the ice on Dillon Reservoir and explored remote valleys on snowmobiles in a last-ditch effort Thursday to find a missing Summit County woman.
Undersheriff Derek Woodman indicated that, without any new leads, the exhaustive search for 62-year-old Patricia McCormick would be called off Thursday night.
“We have (gone) to all the likely areas where a vehicle could crash, go over the roadway, be concealed in the trees, in the depths off in a steep area,” he said. “The next step is the unlikely areas … and so that’s what we’re doing now.”
McCormick was last seen Monday morning while delivering auto parts to Keystone Resort’s vehicle- maintenance shop, and authorities have had no confirmed sightings of her or the conspicuous NAPA auto- parts pickup she was driving.
Members of the Summit County Water Rescue Team on Thursday morning dropped a camera beneath the newly formed ice on the reservoir along a half-mile of shoreline adjacent to Swan Mountain Road, a steep, icy route where she could have skidded off the pavement and into the then- unfrozen water.
Other officers rode snowmobiles into the valley below Webster Pass, near Montezuma, and in Frey Gulch near Keystone – two other areas that potentially were accessible by automobile before this week’s snowfall.
“We’ve pretty much exhausted all of our search efforts within Summit County, and … we’ve adequately covered all of the locations where a vehicle could potentially be,” Woodman said.
Although McCormick carried a cellphone supplied by the Frisco auto-parts store, it has not been used since before her disappearance, Woodman said, and efforts to triangulate its location through Cingular have turned up nothing.
Described by her daughter, Kathleen, as a homebody who has a very small circle of friends and loves her job, McCormick is known to be reliable and conscientious, leading to questions about the possibility of an abduction.
“We still do not have any indicators that would lead us down that path. Certainly, that is always a possibility,” Woodman said, similarly discounting the likelihood of a suicide or that McCormick just walked away from her life.
Given the widespread media attention, police have received surprisingly few tips, said Frisco spokeswoman Linda Lichtendahl.
“We are getting some calls, but not a lot,” she said.
With few leads to follow, investigators are running out of options and will curtail their efforts, Woodman said.
“It certainly is not a monetary issue or a time issue or anything of that nature. It’s a function of reasonableness. It’s just coming to a point where literally all resources are being exhausted and there’s nothing left to search.”
Authorities ask that anyone with information call the Frisco Police Department at 970-668-3579 or the Summit County Sheriff’s Office at 970-453-2232.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
