Nevada County deputies locate missing camper Esmeralda Marie Pineda alive after 12 days in wilderness

The Nevada County Sheriff's Office said deputies and volunteer search-and-rescue teams found 24-year-old Esmeralda Marie Pineda alive on a mountainside after she had been missing for 12 days.

Pineda vanished from a campsite near a mining camp at the bridal fork of the Yuba River and Sweetland Creek in Nevada City, the sheriff's office said. Deputies said she was considered at risk because of her personal history and the treacherous, steep terrain where she was last seen.

Sheriff's Office personnel and volunteers staged at a dirt road above the river and made multiple ground searches, the agency said. Searchers described the trail to the campsite as crude and steep and said hazards included rattlesnakes, poison oak and extreme heat. At times teams suspended searches overnight for safety and resumed the next day.

Deputies said their searchers at one point discovered an illegal grow on a canyon side while hiking through brush. Several days after the initial disappearance, a deputy team located Pineda lying under a makeshift structure on a clearing near the top of a canyon. The agency reported she was severely dehydrated and emaciated; deputies called for an air evacuation to transport her to the nearest hospital.

"We immediately called for an air evac to transport her to the nearest hospital," a deputy with the Nevada County Sheriff's Office said. The agency credited persistent ground searches by deputies and volunteers for locating her, and said Sergeant Moe and Deputy Mackey were among the personnel who helped reach her.

Search-and-rescue volunteers and agency staff described the county's volunteer network as critical to operations. "The backbone of search and rescue are the volunteers," a volunteer said, praising their training and round-the-clock readiness.

Officials said search teams took precautions to protect searcher safety because canyon walls and river systems in the county can be steep and difficult to access. They also said heat and the physical demands of hiking in brush and steep terrain made field operations taxing and occasionally required suspending activity overnight.

The sheriff's office initially asked for public assistance when Pineda was reported missing; officials later notified the public that she had been found and evacuated to a hospital. The county has not released further medical updates. The sheriff's office did not provide an exact calendar date for the disappearance in the briefing materials provided to reporters.

Separately during the briefing, a speaker noted that the county board of supervisors was scheduled to vote the next day on implementing Laura's Law, an assisted outpatient treatment statute; the briefing did not link that impending vote to the search for Pineda and provided no formal action on the statute during the search briefing.

Nevada County officials said searchers and volunteers will continue follow-up as needed and expressed gratitude to the community for support during the operation.