Where is Stivers?
Community expands search for business owner, family man
Agrowing congregation of concerned citizens in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties continued to search for missing 52-year-old John Stivers on Monday, one week after his unexpected disappearance.
Stivers’ family and friends have called it a mystery, describing him as a hardworking business owner and dedicated husband and father.
“It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense,” said his wife, Michele Parker Stivers, in a phone interview on Monday. “If he’s not calling, there’s a reason he can’t get somewhere or get to the phone, and that’s what’s so frightening. It’s so out of character.”
John Stivers, owner of the Lake Tulloch Campground and Marina in Jamestown, was reported missing on Aug. 2 after not showing up to work.
Michele Parker Stivers said nothing appeared out of the ordinary when she last saw her husband at their home in the Calypso Bay neighborhood along Lake Tulloch in Copperopolis on Aug. 2.
That morning, he was doing payroll and paperwork in their home office. She made lunch, which they ate together.
After the meal, he said he planned to go to an Oak Valley branch bank in Sonora to make a deposit. He called about 2 p.m. to notify her that they left their golf cart down by the community clubhouse.
They had plans to camp in Lake Tahoe the next day, so he told her he would come home with their recreational vehicle later that evening after working at the Lake Tulloch campground.
After 9 p.m. that night, Michele Parker Stivers still hadn’t heard from her husband.
“But it’s really not unusual for him to be so late,” she said. “Things come up at the campground and sometimes he stays the night.”
There were no answers to her calls or text messages. She thought maybe his phone had died since it was so late in the day. But when she called the campground, she learned that her husband had not shown up for work at all.
Michele Parker Stivers said she immediately called the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office and learned that his white 2013 Chevrolet Express passenger van had been found parked earlier in the day on the side of Campo Seco Road with no one in or around it.
Authorities searched the area for three days after the report was made. Since then, dozens have stepped up to search for themselves, and a Facebook page “Find John Stivers” has generated 2,000 followers.
But still, they had uncovered no trace of John Stivers as of Monday afternoon.
The family and friends of the Stivers family are deferring speculation, for now, as there is no conclusive evidence at this time pointing to foul play.
However, the absence of any kind of information or sign has buttressed their uncertainty. His wife reinforced that an unexplained disappearance was far outside of his character, and she could not imagine a reason why he could be gone by choice.
“I’m living in a nightmare right now,” she said. “Thank you everybody for all your efforts and all your loving support. We are not giving up. We are going to search until we find him.”
Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Deputy Niccoli Sandelin, the office’s spokesman, said the area where Stivers’ van was found was searched for three days by detectives, unmanned aerial vehicles, search-and-rescue personnel and K-9s.
Sandelin said detectives were processing surveillance video and finishing forensic analyses to develop a timeline of his activity in Tuolumne County that day and track how his vehicle got to that location.
The Sheriff’s Office has characterized his disappearance as suspicious, but there is no evidence at this time linking it to a person of interest or foul play.
The mystery and surprise surrounding John Stivers’ disappearance generated a groundswell of public inquiry offering support and seeking answers.
“We have kind of organized our own searches,” Michele Parker Stivers said. “The detectives we have have been doing everything they possibly can, but they are limited in manpower.”
She estimated about 40 people have consistently helped since the disappearance, whether that was with distributing fliers, going door-to-door to businesses seeking surveillance footage, or searching by air, land and water.
“We’re just randomly doing the best we can,” she said. “We’ve had boats on Melones and Don Pedro, people with airplanes flying over all the lakes and the Chinese Camp area. There’s some people on dirt bikes going behind Black Oak Casino, people on horseback on their properties, and a lot of people hiking and looking.”
Searchers have used Strava, a geographic information system application used to chart, track and time hikers, runners or cyclists in order to record areas they have searched. They have now offered a $10,000 reward for any information which leads to his safe return.
Michelle Parker Stivers has been at the frontline of the search coordination efforts and has been aided by close friends to disseminate information or correspond with media. She said she has manned phones and been on New Melones Reservoir boat search since last week, though the primary effort outside of searching was comforting and aiding their daughter, Karlie, 14.
At this time, the Sheriff’s Office said it has not uncovered any evidence linking John Stivers to another location.
Sandelin said the Sheriff’s Office felt that dedicating its limited resources to unassociated areas would not be effective, in response to concerns that the agency should have established a search group or party. He added that they were not discouraging public searches, but cautioned against the potential for cross-contamination of search areas.
“We would caution safety and understanding the process in trying to make sure we don’t potentially damage potential leads into successfully finding Stivers,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office’s original post about John Stivers’ disappearance has more than 3,400 shares, almost 400 comments and about 550 reactions.
There’s a “Frequently Asked Questions” document on the “Find John Stivers” page which indicated that his van was found between 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Campo Seco Road in Jamestown.
According to a Sheriff’s Office record linked to the FAQ, there was a suspicious vehicle call at 7:49 p.m. Aug. 2 at Campo Seco Road and Seco Terrace Drive.
The document also indicated there were no signs of anything missing from the van, no signs of damage on the van and there was no mention of John Stivers’ phone (to be tracked) in any report.
The FAQ said, as of Saturday, the following areas were searched: Bergel Road along the creek by Sonora Rentals, Phoenix Lake Road from Old Phoenix Road to Hess Avenue, the Golden Oaks subdivision in Jamestown, part of Rock River Road and Green Springs Road and near Jacksonville Road in Jamestown.
Searchers were discouraged from searching alone. Members of the public were also encouraged to use the hashtags #FindJohnstivers or #BringJohnhome on all posts to coordinate the searches.
The “Find John Stivers” page and the Sheriff’s Office’s missing persons post include a variety of suppositions about Stivers and other missing persons in the area, which have not been verified by the Sheriff’s Office.
There are eight missing persons listed since May, including five over the last 35 days, on the Sheriff’s Office Crimegraphics page.
The Sheriff’s Office has released help wanted posts on their Facebook for recent disappearances of Stivers, Robert Baiko (reported missing May 11) and Mark Blodgett (reported missing July 22). The latter two were noted to be associated with Camp Hope, a homeless camp on private land off Stockton Road which is supposed to be vacated by the county this week.
Crimegraphics also noted a missing person named Heather Jones, 26, as of Aug. 3 (the Stivers report notes his disappearance also as Aug. 3, and his is listed as the most recent).
The eight people listed since May — Stivers, Jones, Blodgett, Baiko, and Brian Shrader, Cody Ragsdale, Jordan Cartagena and Thomas Nguyen — all still remain missing, Sandelin said.
Sandelin also said some individuals on social media reported receiving a text message from a number they didn’t recognize which claimed they were associated. That information was not considered credible, but the contact number was passed along to the investigations division.
“Our detectives haven’t even suggested that these are even connected or happening due to the same person or circumstance,” Sandelin said of the eight missing persons cases since May.
Sandelin said it was not uncommon for a series of missing person cases to be issued at one time, noting that many come throughout the year and that the circumstances surrounding them were often unique.
“It’s natural for people to want to develop connections and think there is some larger issue at hand, but we would just urge people to understand that the process that is associated with this,” he said. “A lack of information is generally related to being in-between looking through sources and trying to process information we have coming into us.”
John Stivers grew up in Georgia and earned a degree in landscape and horticulture management from Auburn University, his wife said.
Michele Parker Stivers characterized her husband as resourceful, helpful and enthusiastic, known by friends as “Macstiver” (a play-on-words to the popular 1980s TV series Macguyver) because of an innate ability to fix problems.
“John was the kind of the guy who would drop everything and go help,” she said. “You ask anybody that knew John, and he was one the nicest people you could ever meet.”
They have owned the campground for 17 years, she said, describing it as “his dream job.”
She said he was a board member of the Calypso Bay Property Owners’ Association at Lake Tulloch, enjoyed eating at the nearby Drifters Marina & Grill and loved to camp and fish.
The couple was discussing eventually selling the campground so he could spend more time with his family, though that was a long-term consideration.
A prayer vigil was held at their community clubhouse on Sunday night and attended by about 100 people, Michele Parker Stivers said.
“We are thankful and grateful for the people in my community and family friends who have been this support of love and time and effort that we are rallying around,” she said. “I don’t think we would make it without them.”
John Stivers was described in a missing person flyer as 6 feet, 2 inches tall and 215 pounds, with salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes. The morning of his disappearance, he was wearing a dark green Stone Brewing shirt, jeans, work boots and large Tilley hat.
Michele Parker Stivers added that he usually would change into a Lake Tulloch campground shirt before heading to work.
Anyone in the public with information related to John Stiver’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office Investigation Division at (209) 694-2900.