‘I dropped everything’: Rescuers hailed as heroes for saving mother and son lost in B.C. forest

Members of a B.C. First Nation are being thanked for their quick work finding a missing child after he and his mother got lost in the woods.

A 12-year-old boy and his mother are safe and back home after spending a cold night along the Chehalis River in the forest near Chilliwack.

The mother and son were hiking in the woods last Friday, but got lost.

They spent a cold night in the forest, managing to light a fire, but split up at first light as the boy was trying to find their car and his mother’s medication.

When the boy didn’t return, his mother became worried and went looking for him.

According to Kent Harrison Search and Rescue, the mother arrived at a home on the Sts’ailes Reserve, about two kilometres away, and that’s when band members jumped in to help.

“I was at my kitchen window and I seen something walking down the trail here,” Robin Chapman from the Sts’ailes Nation told Global News.

She had seen the mother, who was crying about her missing son.

“She was terrified,” Chapman said. “First of all because her son was missing out there and she was just freezing cold.”