21-year-old goes missing while organizing ‘epic’ treasure hunt, California family says
A Northern California man hoped to lead friends and family on an elaborate treasure hunt by hiding clues around his Humboldt County community, his family told news outlets.
Now relatives are resigning themselves to the worst-case scenario.
Hunter Lewis, 21, rappelled down cliffs and climbed a railroad trestle to hide clues to a fictional pirate treasure supposedly left by a family ancestor, SFGate reported.
He set out Dec. 30 in his family’s fiberglass canoe to hide the final “treasure” on a rock in the Pacific Ocean, documenting his progress on the “lostlewistreasure” Instagram page.
Hunter Lewis hasn’t been seen since, although pieces of his canoe have washed ashore on the coast, North Coast Journal reported.
“It’s so epic what he did, and yet, I wish he wasn’t the lost treasure,” his father, Corey Lewis, told SFGate.
Hunter Lewis entered the ocean in the canoe near Trinidad Harbor sometime between 10 a.m. and noon Dec. 30, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said.
The U.S. Coast Guard suspended the official search Dec. 31 after an extensive effort involving boats, helicopters and ground crews, according to a Facebook post.
“It’s always difficult to suspend a search when you don’t have any answers as to what happened,” Capt. Mark Hiigel of the Coast Guard said in the post. “In this case, with no further information to go on and given the conditions, we’ve exhausted our reasonable search options.”
Family and friends had continued the search, coordinating their efforts on a Facebook group.
On Monday, Jan. 10, Corey Lewis called those efforts off.
“It is with a heavy heart that I tell you now that we are calling off these active searches at this time,” he wrote on the Facebook group. “His body may still wash up on the beach along with his other treasure items one day.”
“It is time for the family to look for some closure and begin to create space to grieve and heal,” the post read. “Although his body did not come back to us, Hunter will always be with us living in our hearts and our memories.”
On Sunday, Jan. 2, Corey Lewis posted to the search Facebook group that a “treasure box” he had once given Hunter had been found on the coastline.
“That little wooden box was given to me by my father and I gave it to Hunter. And now a small piece of my son has been returned to me,” he wrote. “Thank you all so much.”
This story was originally published January 4, 2022 at 9:51 AM.