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Searchers continue efforts to solve mystery of pilot, helicopter missing since 1997

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Courtenay, B.C. -

A Port McNeill man is on a mission to try to help solve a decades-old mystery that dates back to when a helicopter went missing off the north end of Vancouver Island.

Teddy Masales was the pilot and lone occupant of a Robertson R-22 that disappeared on the evening of Sept. 25, 1997, after being turned away from the Port Hardy airport.

The chopper was denied landing at the airport because a scheduled flight was coming in from Vancouver and it was believed that Masales flew a short distance away to wait for clearance, but then disappeared. No trace of the pilot nor the helicopter was ever found, despite extensive searches at the time.

Rob Hilts of Port McNeill has been intrigued by the mystery since learning about it last year.

“The story was forwarded to me and I thought, ‘Why not have a look at it? I took a look on Google Earth with some of the different spots it could be,” Hilts says.

He did some searching last year, looking at aerial photographs and then travelling out to spots that showed promise, flying his drone to take a closer look at what he had spotted earlier. He’s back on the hunt again now that water levels have receded.

“I’m just looking for indentations or any sort of influence on the topography where it looks like there may have been some displacement,” he says.

He’s searching in an area far from where the chopper was originally thought to have gone down, but it’s near the Quatse River, where the pilot’s wallet was discovered by a Grade 11 student and her mother in March of last year. The wallet contained the pilot’s birth certificate and social insurance card.

“The wallet came from that river right? At the mouth of the river, that’s where it was found. It has to be somewhere around there,” Hilts says.

The discovery of the wallet brought up old memories, but fresh hope from those related to the pilot. Sandra Masales is Teddy’s sister-in-law.

“Any time something comes up it’s very upsetting for everybody, because we never did find anything. We don’t know where he went down, so any time any mention of it, of course, it’s a shocker, it brings back the feelings again,” Masales says.

Masales and other family members – including the pilot’s 22-year-old son, whom he’d never met – have searched various areas from time to time. She says there are a number of tributaries that feed into Hardy Bay where the wallet was found. They have searched many of them, as well as bush areas, but still have yet to find another clue.

“When we found the wallet, it gave some renewed hope that we might find something, but we’ve been searching every chance we got for the longest time after that, but never found anything,” Masales says.

Meanwhile, even more assistance with the mystery could be on the way if volunteers with the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA) get back in the air.

Volunteer pilots had hoped to fly over the Port Hardy area for searches last year, but were grounded due to COVID-19 restrictions. Zone Commander Bill Velle says that could change shortly.

“We’re just in the planning stages of it now, we would be able to have a crew out and do some searching again for that, probably sometime later this month,” Velle says.

CASARA volunteers have been searching west of Port McNeill right up past Port Hardy along rivers, as well as over at Numas Island, where it’s known the pilot touched down for a brief time that evening to try to wait out the weather.

It was believed the chopper may have gone down near there, but the discovery of the wallet confuses that theory. Velle says new information provided to them by a float-plane pilot who was flying that stormy night might assist in their search.

“He said that the ceiling was way down, of course, but west of Port Hardy up towards the Deserter Islands, in that area, it looks like the ceilings were a lot brighter over there and he was kind of wondering if (Masales) took off from Numas Island and went up west of Numas Island and circled around to try to come into Port Hardy that way,” Velle says.

He says that will also be one of the areas they’ll concentrate on for their searching.  

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