A truck containing the body of a 62-year-old Summit County woman missing since November was found Thursday afternoon in the frigid depths of iced-over Dillon Reservoir.
Patricia McCormick, who worked for NAPA auto parts, was last seen Nov. 28 after making a delivery in Keystone and was presumed to have been on her way back to Frisco.
Her Ford Ranger pickup, topped by one of the company’s distinctive yellow plastic ballcaps, apparently skidded on the icy Dillon Dam road on the north side of the reservoir, flipped over a guardrail, and then tumbled down a steep 60-foot embankment and into water 30 to 35 feet deep.
Several days of intensive searching throughout Summit County after McCormick was reported missing failed to turn up any clues as to her whereabouts.
Officials on Thursday said that was due largely to a winter storm that started the day after her disappearance. The cold temperatures caused the reservoir to ice over shortly after the accident, and other clues – broken glass, plastic and damage to the guardrail – were buried by snow.
“We knew that as the snow receded, we were going to be driving up a variety of areas and we’d be looking over the edges of the roads to see if we could see anything,” said Summit County Undersheriff Derek Woodman.
There was no ice on the reservoir on the day of the accident. Had it happened two to three days later when the reservoir initially froze over, Woodman said, a hole would have been seen in the ice.
In early December, searchers dropped a camera beneath the ice along a half-mile of shoreline adjacent to Swan Mountain Road, on the opposite side of the reservoir from where the truck was discovered Thursday.
In the ensuing days, McCormick’s daughter, Kathy, made a heartwrenching plea for information, and she continued to search for her mother and distribute fliers all winter in hopes that someone would have seen her. She could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
Woodman said accident debris and damage to the guardrail were not visible as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
“Unless there was a vehicle behind her at the time … you never would have seen it,” he said.
A member of the Summit County Search and Rescue Team, John Agnew, spied debris from the truck while walking along the road on Thursday afternoon specifically looking for clues that might have been revealed since the snow melted.
Shortly later, members of the water-rescue team wearing yellow, cold-water dry suits ventured out onto the 3-foot-thick ice to determine the crushed vehicle’s exact location.
“They went out on the ice, popped a couple of holes into it and dropped a camera down and they were able to locate the vehicle,” Woodman said, confirming that searchers believe they have spotted a body.
Rescuers plan to cut a large hole in the thick ice today and will send divers down to retrieve the truck and McCormick’s body, Summit County Coroner Joanne Richardson said.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com.
