Mystery over missing runner, 37, continues
Authorities say the father of two stopped at a package delivery store before heading to park
Investigators will study and organize thousands of images taken from drones and other equipment and eventually release them to the public now that the official search and rescue effort for a 37-year-old Berkeley man who went missing on a run is over.
Authorities said they know only that Philip Kreycik stopped at a package delivery store in Oakland and mailed something before he arrived at the regional park where authorities say he disappeared.
Beyond that, five days of searching much of the park for Kreycik, as well as some of the Niles Canyon area, did not yield any results. Authorities said now they will respond only to significant leads.
“We’re in the process of putting all the images together, and we intend to release it,” Alameda County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said. “We want to get as many eyes looking at those images as we can. Maybe somebody out there will see something nobody else sees.”
Though the official search is over, volunteers gathered Thursday morning to continue looking for Kreycik.
According to authorities, he went for a run Saturday morning, leaving his home in Berkeley around 9 a.m. and telling his wife he was going to Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. He did arrive; authorities said his car with a cellphone inside was in the parking lot of the Moller Ranch staging area around 11 a.m.
Before he did, he stopped at the store in Oakland, Kelly said. Authorities said that nugget of information is not necessarily suspicious.
“We do know he went to a store,” Kelly said. “So we’re exploring that. We’re working to find out what that’s about.”
Pleasanton police Lt. Eric Silacci, whose department led the searches from Saturday through Tuesday, said Silacci’s family is “doing OK. They understand the significance of the fifth day and the scaled-down efforts. They’re still carrying hope.”
Kreycik is married and has two small children, Kelly said.
In an interview with ABC7 that aired Wednesday, Kreycik’s wife, Jen Yao, said: “I know in my heart of hearts he’s out there. He’s out there and he’s alive and he’s waiting for us. And maybe he’s dehydrated, maybe injured, delirious.”
Wednesday’s efforts included an area of Niles Canyon in Sunol following an overnight tip, but there were no signs of him there. One search and rescue team member suffered a minor injury, Pleasanton police said.
The Sheriff’s Office led the Wednesday search because the search area was in an unincorporated part of the county. A group dedicated to finding Kreycik said it had received a lead from a family in Sunol that reported hearing a cry for help from a canyon just before midnight. The group posted the information on a social media page.
Crews spent the day looking, and authorities said nothing emerged from the tip.
“The strangest thing about this is that nobody has seen him,” Kelly said. “And no matter where you go in this park, even if you get lost, you’ll not need a lot of time to come across a road or a trail that will lead you back.”
In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Silacci acknowledged all who had pitched in as part of the larger effort.
“We appreciate the Kreycik family’s cooperation and patience during this difficult time, and we have the best resources here to help in both the search efforts and the investigation,” he said, adding that “every day, search and rescue crews and countless volunteers have been working nonstop to find Philip, and we all want to bring him home.”