330 people search Salinas River in new effort to find missing SLO County boy

Professional search and rescue crews gathered from all over the state this morning to resume the search for Kyle Doan, the 5-year-old San Miguel boy who was swept away by floodwaters on Jan. 9 in San Marcos Creek.

The search efforts are wide-scale and are covering a 6-mile-long and half-mile-wide section of the Salinas River that meets up with San Marcos Creek. Large parts of the river are still covered in massive piles of debris from the flooding that ravaged the area six months ago.

“The river itself is 106 miles long, and so we are searching a small portion of the river, but this is what we think is our best hope for trying to find Kyle,” said Tony Cipolla, public information officer for the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.

More than 330 crew members are participating in the search, which began at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning and was set to continue all day.

“The search will last all day today, and if Kyle is not found, we will continue searching all day tomorrow as well,” Cipolla said.

In an interview with The Tribune, Kyle’s father Brian Doan said the family was happy to see the search resume but were still disappointed in the response over the last six months.

“While we are grateful that the search is happening, both myself and my wife wish this happened months earlier,” Doan said.

“Tomorrow is the six-month anniversary of our son’s disappearance, and that’s a watershed mark that we never wanted to be facing,” he said.

Doan also shared that July 17 would have been Kyle’s sixth birthday.

Search and rescue teams map locations in Salinas Riverbed

Crews were stationed at various drop-off points along the river and assigned to specific search areas on Saturday.

Teams combed through the designated areas along the now mostly dried-up river, walking in straight lines to ensure that no sections were missed.

Searchers use the CalTopo App, which tracks the individual routes of every team member and allows them to post the location of any discoveries they make during the search.

“The search efforts have been made with great assistance from the San Luis Obispo County Incident Management Team as well as the state office of Emergency Services,” Cipolla said. “They have provided resources that have really assisted us in the search.”

A member of the Marin County Search and Rescue Team said teams were prepared to spend all day looking for any signs, no matter how minuscule, that might lead to Kyle.

In addition to search and rescue crews, heavy machinery was also brought on site in case Kyle’s remains are located,” Cipolla said.

Cipolla said that a liaison officer has been in contact with Brian and Lindsy Doan and has been keeping them informed of all the searches that have been going on since Kyle went missing in January.

Despite that, Kyle’s parents remain dissatisfied with how the overall effort has unfolded.

“It is our frustration that we just don’t feel like we’re totally included in everything that is currently going on,” Brian Doan said.

“When it comes to specificity in a timely manner, that is kind of elusive,” Doan said.

As the search continues, Cipolla said the team shares one goal.

“Our hope is very simple. Our main objective is to find Kyle and reunite him with his family,” Cipolla said.

Bystanders save mother but couldn’t keep boy from being swept away

Kyle Doan was swept away by floodwaters on Jan. 9 when he and his mother Lindsy Doan tried to cross an intersection flooded by the swollen San Marcos Creek in their car while on their way to Lillian Larsen Elementary School, where Kyle was a kindergartner and Lindsy Doan works.

Bystanders were able to save Doan’s mother, but Kyle was swept away in the rushing water and has not been seen since that day.

In the ensuing months, Kyle’s parents have been critical about the efforts to search for their missing son.

In the aftermath of the January storms, both President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned Kyle during a tour of flood damage in Aptos.

“Jill and I have him in our prayers, the family in our prayers,” Biden said while speaking to the media near the pier at Seacliff State Beach.

In a May news conference in Los Angeles, Newsom responded to a question about the search for Kyle, saying he was proud of the “remarkable, large scale effort” by local and state agencies to try to find the boy.

“It’s devastating and breaks your heart,” Newsom told the reporter, while saying that local agencies asked the state to no longer assist in the search and that the state followed that request.

That statement angered Kyle’s parents, who also believe Newsom gave the impression that he had visited the search area when he actually had not. In response, they wrote a scathing letter to the governor after the press conference.

But the Sheriff’s Office said they never asked the state to step aside.

A spokesman for the governor later told The Tribune that the “full weight of the state” remains invested in the search effort, ready to support local officials and provide resources.

Brian Doan said he and his wife still find the governor’s comments to be highly insulting, Doan said.

“We still have no explanation as to why he says that his executive office was called off the search, and the Sheriff’s department flat out denies that,” he said.