Published: August 18, 2008 11:32 pm            

Boy found safe after 2-hour search

BAKERSVILLE — Kelley Simon is a typical 8-year-old.

The Cub Scout and soccer player from suburban Pittsburgh got the urge, as kids his age often do, to ride his bike just beyond parental limits while on vacation Monday in the Somerset County mountains.

A wrong turn here, another there, and he was lost.

Nearly two hours later, after a search by dozens of volunteers and state troopers, Kelley was found walking through the woods by two other vacationers.

He was shaken and scratched, but otherwise unharmed.

“I’ve never been so frightened,” said his mother, Rebecca Simon of Gibsonia.

Simon and her husband, Nate, had taken the family up to a cottage tucked in the hills off Jimtown Road for a week’s vacation. They said they told Kelley he could ride his bike on the driveway, but he wasn’t allowed on the road.

When they went to their car, Kelley was nowhere

to be found.

“He just took a path up behind the house,” Nate Simon said. “Before he got too far, he didn’t know where he was.”

County dispatchers received a report of the missing boy about 10:55 a.m. Volunteers from the Bakersville, New Centerville and Somerset fire departments; a state police helicopter and troopers; and rangers from nearby Kooser and Laurel Hill state parks were called in to search.

“The only way to do something like this is to go after it as if it’s your own kid,” state police Trooper Lou Dirienzo said.

Stephanie Davis, 21, and Ryan Davis, 18, both of Finleyville, Washington County, were sleeping in a nearby cabin when a state trooper told them about the missing child.

“I just didn’t want to stop looking,” Stephanie Davis said. “I would have felt terrible.”

The two scoured the wooded hillside overlooking the house where the Simons are staying. After the chopper flew overhead, they heard a boy screaming and found him just after 12:30 p.m.

The boy was found near where fellow vacationer Jim Firanski, 33, of Pittsburgh had just spotted two mother bears and three cubs gnawing on a haystack.

“Words can’t describe how much we appreciate what they did today,” Rebecca Simon said. “The state police and fire departments were helpful, too.”

“The response was faster than I thought,” Nate Simon added.

When they saw their son, the Simons broke into tears.

“He’s a fantastic boy. He has never disappeared,” Rebecca Simon said. “As soon as he saw me, he said, ‘Sorry Mom, sorry Dad.’ ”

        

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