After five long weeks of concerted but fruitless effort to locate their missing daughter, Tom and Marian Garrigan have reason to hope for some sense of closure. That hope comes in the wake of the recovery of the body of her friend, Travis Alexander, Saturday afternoon in Harding Lake, Alaska. Alexander’s body was recovered in 80 feet of water about half a mile from where the body of fellow AmeriCorp volunteer Liza Lomando was found on May 30.
Kathleen Garrigan disappeared while canoeing with Lomando and Alexander on Harding Lake on May 27.
Despite the efforts of state and federal authorites and over 100 volunteers, many working 16-hour-plus days, there had been no progress for a month. One volunteer group, the Seth Foundation, spent most of last week searching the lake with high-tech sonar equipment in grid patterns, but turned up nothing.
Then sonar expert Gene Ralston and a crew arrived from Idaho on Thursday with advanced equipment capable of both locating objects in deep water and clearly discerning their shape. He began searching Friday, and on Saturday around 1 p.m., located Alexander’s body. Volunteer divers brought Alexander to the surface. Members of Garrigan’s family, who have been on site since early June, were reportedly in the boat with Ralston when he located the body.
Several boats reportedly began renewed searches for Garrigan immediately after Alexander’s body was recovered. A storm forced the search to shut down overnight Saturday. The Tanana Chiefs tribal organization reported Monday that the full attention of the group is now being turned to the search for Garrigan. Many of Garrigan’s family are present at Harding Lake along with Kathleen’s parents.
Ralston needs a “no wake” field for grid work. He plans to work for 12-hour periods and then apply the data to his computer program, which builds a report during his “off-water” time.
The Garrigan family was unavailable for comment Monday morning.
Marian Garrigan reportedly left for Alaska Sunday to be with her husband, who has spent most of the time on site at Harding Lake since his daughter was reported missing.
The family held another fundraiser last Thursday at FitzGerald’s night club in Berwyn. Nicolle Bowling of Community Bank of Oak Park and River Forest, which is administering the Kathleen Garrigan Fund (660-1000), said the event, like others before it, went “fantastic.”
“It was well attended,” she said. Bowling added that the bank continues to receive checks made out to the fund.
Funds are needed because the recovery efforts have been physically and financially draining. The Tanana Chiefs said Friday that while 10 volunteer boats were available Friday, only two were on the water due to a lack of manpower. That, they said, was the result of physical and emotional exhaustion caused by long days on the water. With the recovery of Alexander, both spirits and energy have risen.