Rescuers

It was Oct. 16, 1987, when a toddler who would become known as Baby Jessica was pulled from a Texas well and cheers erupted throughout the country. Events that unite a nation -- particularly those with a happy ending -- are rare, and the rescue of Jessica McClure, 18 months, was one of those. As the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time, hundreds of bone-weary rescuers and onlookers cheered in triumph when the girl was pulled out of an abandoned well after a 58 1/2-hour ordeal.

An 18-year-old hiker who was missing for days in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon says she  doesn't remember much from her ordeal. "I honestly didn't even know I was missing," Kyndall Jack told reporters Monday outside UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. "I didn't know I was gone. I didn't know anything was going on. I just thought I was in a big dream. " Jack said she did not know at what point she became separated from her friend, Nicolas Cendoya, 19, or how long she had been in the spot where she was rescued Thursday . She said she spoke to Cendoya after the rescue, hoping to piece together their recollections, but the effort was futile.

Campbell should have kept right on driving. CHRISTINA WALDECK Torrance

Mike Leum, the reserve chief of search and rescue for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, has a 20-year-old daughter. So when he met with the parents of the college student who got lost while hiking in Orange County's back country, he had a promise for them. “I looked them both in the eyes and told them definitely that we were going to find her,” Leum said. “I'm glad I was able to come through on that.” On Thursday, that college student's voice secured her rescue.

Rescuers were confident Wednesday night that they would locate a missing hiker in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon after finding the woman's hiking partner alive in the area. Crews on the ground were being aided by rescuers in a helicopter who were using infrared technology in hopes of pinpointing the location 18-year-old Kyndall Jack in the brushy mountainside terrain, authorities said. Fog was beginning to move into the area late Wednesday, but rescuers were not sure if it would force officials to halt the air operation, authorities said.

When the demonic twister struck Joplin, killing at least 122 people, it sheared the roof off the Home Depot and toppled its front wall -- a massive concrete slab more than 8 inches thick. Several people were crushed beneath the slab, and the store became the focus of a complicated recovery effort. At least one crew -- the Missouri Task Force 1 urban rescue team, based in Boone County, Mo. -- drilled 2-inch holes through concrete to drop small cameras into the space beneath to find victims.

Rescuers found four climbers who had been missing on Oregon's Mt. Hood since a blizzard hit the peak Sunday. Michael Whelan and Shawn Corrigan of Bend and Colette Whelan Ownes and Robert Sheley of Portland, all in their 30s, were found hiking down the mountain near Portland. The climbers, had planned a day hike to the summit, the state's highest peak at 11,245 feet. They had sheltered themselves in a snow cave until conditions improved.

Barring last-minute complications, rescuers plan to reach 33 trapped Chilean miners by daybreak Saturday and then make a crucial decision that will determine how soon afterward they have them above ground. Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said Thursday that a drill was within 300 feet of where the men have been stuck since the gold and copper mine collapse Aug. 5. It's the closest of three competing drilling operations racing to reach the miners, who remain huddled in a 600-square-foot refuge about 2,300 feet below the entrance of the mine.

With more than 700 people reported dead, rescuers smashed through fallen walls and sawed into rubble Sunday in an urgent push to find survivors of the massive earthquake that roared through Chile a day earlier. Some 2 million were said to be displaced, injured or otherwise impaired by the disaster. Untold numbers remained missing. Government forces struggled to contain looting in some of the most heavily damaged areas, dispatching the army to the task in Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city.

The two hikers who were lost for days in Orange County's rugged backcountry remain hospitalized and are showing signs of improvement, but a reserve deputy who fell during the dramatic rescue is in serious condition with head injuries. The day after the second of the two hikers was found hidden in head-high brush, family members thanked the search teams and volunteers who scoured the area around Trabuco Canyon, and one of the rescued hikers issued a statement Friday praising those who had come to his aid. "I want to thank all those who never stopped trying to find me and Kyndall….

In the search for a college student lost while hiking in Orange County's backcountry, things were beginning to look grim. It had been four days since she went missing. Steep ravines with 10-foot-high brush hindered rescue efforts and thwarted helicopters with infrared cameras. When searchers found her companion dehydrated and exhausted, he said they'd become separated and he hadn't seen her recently. But on Thursday, Kyndall Jack's voice secured her rescue. The 18-year-old's screams from a cliff in the Trabuco Canyon area caught the attention of a search team and led to a protracted and dramatic rescue.

As authorities cheered the rescue of two hikers in the mountains of Orange County, they also were carefully monitoring the condition of a rescuer who was seriously hurt Thursday. The rescuer, an unidentified Orange County reserve deputy, fell about 60 feet and hit his head. "Now our focus is on the reserve deputy," said Sheriff's Lt. Jason Park. The deputy was in serious condition and in intensive care, but his injuries are not expected to be life-threatening. The rescue of the hiker Kyndall Jack occurred Thursday around noon when searchers head her voice.

Rescuers were confident Wednesday night that they would locate a missing hiker in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon after finding the woman's hiking partner alive in the area. Crews on the ground were being aided by rescuers in a helicopter who were using infrared technology in hopes of pinpointing the location 18-year-old Kyndall Jack in the brushy mountainside terrain, authorities said. Fog was beginning to move into the area late Wednesday, but rescuers were not sure if it would force officials to halt the air operation, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department will upgrade its 911 dispatch center to work with neighboring fire agencies and help ensure the closest available rescuers are sent to victims during life-threatening emergencies, Chief Brian Cummings said Wednesday. A Times analysis of city and county records published in October found that in more than 70,000 emergency medical calls since 2007, the LAFD sent its own rescuers to victims despite the fact that Los Angeles County firehouses were closer to the scene.

On his Tuesday morning snowmobile ride along Maine's Sugarloaf Mountain, a man stumbled upon a teenager who had gone missing from a nearby ski resort and spent two nights huddling for warmth in a makeshift snow cave as rescuers scoured the area. Nicholas Joy, a 17-year-old high school senior from Medford, Mass., got separated from his father on the slopes of the Sugarloaf Mountain Resort on Sunday afternoon. The two rode the ski lift together and then took separate routes down the mountain, planning to meet up at the bottom, Sugarloaf spokesman Ethan Austin told the Los Angeles Times.

Rescuers found a man and a woman who used a cellphone Thursday to report that they were lost on a mountain trail above Altadena, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said. The unidentified couple were uninjured. The caller told the Altadena sheriff's station that he and the woman became lost while hiking, said Sgt. Jeff Hardt. He said deputies used the phone's signal to locate the pair.

Pat Derby could coax Willie the bear with a handful of jelly beans, make Christopher the cougar twitch his tail on command, and even kissed Rijo the tiger. But when it came to Walt Disney, she had less patience. Derby, a Hollywood animal trainer turned animal rights activist, once walked out on him in the middle of filming for "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" after he subjected her bear cub to two hours of retakes under the hot studio lights. She always got along better with animals than people, anyway, she often said.

Authorities in Washington state narrowed their search Saturday for a skydiver who disappeared after jumping from a helicopter above the Cascade Mountains and are hoping to find the 29-year old alive after two days in the rugged terrain. Sgt. Cindi West of the King County Sheriff's Office said authorities used cellphone signals and the helicopter's flight pattern to focus on a quarter-square-mile area on Mt Si east of Seattle. The skydiver's cellphone is no longer working, she said.