Sheriff’s office calls of search for woman
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 1:42 PM PST
McDermitt, Nev. - The Malheur County Sheriff’s Office has called off a search for a Caldwell woman reported missing Monday.
The search began at about 11: 45 p.m. Monday night after an unidentified woman called 9-1-1 from a cell phone out of Humboldt County, Malheur County Sheriff Andy Bentz said.
The phone was later traced to a Boise woman who had not had the phone for several years, he said. Officers were unable to use their tracing technology to determine who placed the phone call.
Bentz said based on the information from the phone call, the woman had pulled off the road and gotten stuck and was very cold.
Bentz said the woman indicated she was somewhere between Homedale and Jordan Valley.
Owyhee and Malheur County sheriff’s officers and search and rescue team members began searching for woman, Bentz said, with 19 personnel just from Malheur County. During the night, Bentz said, an investigator contacted the relatives of a person who was reported missing that also could have been the woman deputies were searching.
The woman, a Rebecca Hobbs, 33, Caldwell, apparently left the Caldwell area Monday with the intention of dropping family members in McDermitt, Nev., and, with this information, the search shifted further south, Bentz said.
He said investigators received information Hobbs was seen dropping off those family members at The Say When Inn at McDermitt, and was located at about 9 a.m. today at the Washburn Creek Ranch, just south of McDermitt, Nev.
He said Hobbs, who may have been having medical problems, was driving a 1993 white Plymouth van.
He also said, while sheriff’s officers can’t confirm it yet, there might have been some kind of altercation between Hobbs and the family members that led to the drop-off in McDermitt.
