Community Corner

Search for Missing Man to Resume Next Week

South Bay resident Erik Lamberg went missing in Mendocino County in May.

This article was reported and written by editor Liz Spear.

Searchers hunting for Erik Lamberg, a South Bay man who went missing in Mendocino County in May, will return next week to the area in which a trained dog picked up a scent Wednesday, said Lt. Shannon Barney of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department.

Barney described the area as a canyon and said he will coordinate another search and rescue team for next week's trek into the hilly, isolated and treacherous Mendocino County forest near the Skunk Train's Clare Mill depot. Searchers conducted an all-day effort to find Lamberg on Wednesday after confirming reports of human cries heard at Clare Mill on May 31 and fir boughs placed as a bed in a shed and a warm fire June 30.

On Wednesday, searchers saw the fir boughs in the shed and a spot where a fire had been built. Barney said there's no way to tell how old the fir boughs are. Forty or more search and rescue volunteers from Mendocino County and Marin County SAR and dogs combed the area at Clare Mill.

The 52-year-old Lamberg, who is bipolar, had been living with his mother in Redondo Beach when he left to go to Oregon to enter rehab. His van was found on an unpaved road in Mendocino County on June 1 and he was last seen May 26.

His wife Samantha, who lives in the couple's Hermosa Beach home with their two children, was in consistent phone contact with Erik as he traveled north. She became concerned when she stopped receiving phone calls from him.

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