Family of four, including two young children found safe, two days after their car was found abandoned and out of gas

DEASE LAKE (NEWS 1130) – A family from Oregon has been found safe in northern BC, two days after their car was found abandoned without gas near Dease Lake.

Jeffrey Phan and Michelle Lesaca, both aged 24, along with their two and three-year-old children were found on the west side of Kinaskan Lake Wednesday afternoon.

A search and rescue helicopter had spotted four people matching their descriptions earlier in the day and it took a few hours to track down their exact spot.

“Obviously, the biggest thing was getting them from the cross-lake back to onto the highway side and in the care of BC Ambulance and RCMP,” says Terrace Search and Rescue Manager Dale Jephson.

He doesn’t know how long the family was out there for or why they ended up in the Dease Lake area.

Jephson notes the area is vast and remote.

“To drive to Terrace from Vancouver, it’s 16 hours,” he explains for reference. “To drive [from Terrace] to this location, where these people were up in Dease Lake, it’s a good five or six hour drive. You drive six hours, and you probably pass communities of maybe a thousand people in total.”

The family had originally planned to go to the Philippines out of the Portland airport in the middle of May, but they cancelled their tickets.