The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office is still searching for 73-year-old Jeanne Burke after she went missing from the Felton area on Nov. 18.
Sgt. Ryan Farotte told Lookout on Wednesday that the search team no longer includes the more than 100 search-and-rescue volunteers from the earlier days of the effort. They’ve been focusing on the Smith Grade and Moore Ranch Road areas.
“Small teams are going out and still searching,” he said. “It’s just not the big search parties that we had.”
Farotte said that the search teams are smaller because the sheriff’s office is focused on searching the gaps they may have missed, and the search and rescue teams have left Santa Cruz County after assisting for six days.
“They’re spending a lot of time trying to analyze the six days of searches that resulted in about 3,500 miles of tracking,” Farotte said of data collected via GPS. “To see if there’s any other areas within those search areas that we need to go back and re-search.”
Burke, who was most recently seen Nov. 18 near the Felton quarry, is considered “at risk” due to medical concerns. She was wearing a red and black plaid jacket, black pants, one pink sandal and one black sandal. Burke is 5 feet tall, of a medium build, with long grey hair and blue eyes, and wears glasses.
Officials are urging residents in the Smith Grade and Moore Ranch Road areas to check their properties and security cameras. Anyone with information about Burke’s location is encouraged to call the sheriff’s office dispatch at 831-471-1121.
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