SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — David Lavau’s children drove slowly along the perilously curved mountain road, stopping to peer over the treacherous drop-offs and call out for their father, missing for six days.
Then, finally, a faint cry: “Help, help.”
Close to a week after his car plunged 200 feet into a ravine, Lavau, 68, was rescued Thursday by his three adult children, who took matters into their own hands after a detective told them his last cellphone signal came from a rugged section of the Angeles National Forest.
As he lay injured in the woods next to his wrecked car, he survived by eating bugs and leaves and drinking creek water, a doctor said.
One of the first things he requested after his rescue: a chocolate malt, his daughter Chardonnay Lavau said on NBC’s “Today” show.
David Lavau was in serious but stable condition Friday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital with three rib fractures, a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm and fractures in his back, said Dr. Garrett Sutter. Lavau was expected to be released in three to four days.
Dr. Ranbir Singh, the hospital’s trauma director, said Lavau told him that he was driving home about 7 p.m. when he was temporarily blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car.
He braked but failed to gain traction. The car flipped and plunged down the embankment.
Lavau said he was unsure whether he collided with the car. A second car with a body was found next to Lavau’s vehicle.
That car, a Toyota Camry, was identified as belonging to 88-year-old Melvin Gelfand, whose family had reported him missing on Sept. 14, said Los Angeles police Detective Marla Ciuffetelli of the missing-persons unit.
Lavau spent the night in his wrecked car and crawled out in daylight. He found a stream nearby and ate ants, the doctor said. He also found a flare in the other car and tried to light it, but it was expired. He couldn’t find his cellphone.
Lavau could hear cars and see their lights on the road above and was hopeful that he would be discovered, but as time passed, he grew more uncertain.
“He mentally said goodbye to his family. He wasn’t sure anyone would be able to find him,” Singh said.
His children told “Today” that after realizing he was missing, they contacted a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, who was able to narrow Lavau’s whereabouts through cellphone use, text messages and debit card purchases, to the sparsely populated area, about 50 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The children organized themselves into a search party.
“We stopped at every ravine and looked over every hill, and then my brother got out of the car and we kept screaming, and the next thing we heard Dad saying, ‘Help, help,’ and there he was,” Lisa Lavau said.
