Volunteers searching for a Northern California man missing since Thursday have found another one of the clues he left in a treasure hunt for friends and family prior to his disappearance.
Hunter Lewis, 21, was last seen paddling his canoe in Trinidad Harbor in Humboldt County on Thursday. Lewis, a Blue Lake resident, had intended to bury the final piece of treasure on nearby Flatiron Rock, his father said on Tuesday in a Facebook group dedicated to finding his son that has more than 2,100 members.
Corey Lewis posted a video on Tuesday afternoon featuring a key that he said his son 3D-printed, which pointed "directly to Flatiron Rock." The younger Lewis said he had buried the treasure "where his heart was," his father said in the video, recounting the clue.
Eyewitnesses saw Hunter Lewis "canoeing out towards Flatiron Rock," according to his father.
“The safest place to approach Flatiron Rock, it would appear, would be from the shoreward side,” Corey Lewis said in the video. “But there’s a dangerous reef of rocks there that Hunter didn’t know about, and that’s only visible as the tide lowers. This is the reef that overturned him, and all the lighter debris floated north … where we found it.”
Lewis said volunteers found heavier material, including part of his son’s wooden treasure bucket, on Trinidad State Beach. He wrote that the search is now "primarily focused on" there and College Cove.
Hunter Lewis, an engineering student at California State University Long Beach, had returned home for the holidays and was running an elaborate treasure hunt for his friends and family, which started on Dec. 27. An Instagram account for the event had 99 followers as of press time.
Lewis was reported missing on Dec. 30, and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said he was “believed to have possibly entered the ocean” in his 15-foot green, fiberglass canoe at some point between 10 a.m. and noon.
The sheriff’s office suspended its search after New Year’s Eve, a spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday. Volunteers continued the search into 2022, discovering a wooden treasure box Lewis’ father had given him and part of his canoe.
Corey Lewis posted in the Facebook group on Tuesday afternoon that he and search organizers were looking for boats with sonar equipment and waverunners in order to search the waters closer to Flatiron Rock. They also hoped to coordinate a dive team near Flatiron Rock and the reef he believes his son struck.
Anyone who saw Lewis last week or has information on his current whereabouts can contact the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office by calling 707-445-7251.
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