3 missing boys found safe, scared in the woods

As soon as Ilene Seaward heard a TV news report Thursday morning that three boys had been missing overnight from a Monroe neighborhood, she knew what her next task would be.

Her Snohomish home is within a mile or two of a wooded area near the neighborhood, and she figured she was close enough to join the search.

Seaward, 52, says she frequently walks her dogs through those woods. She figured that's where she'd start.

In jeans and sweat shirt, she began scouring paths looking for signs that anything might have been disturbed.

Two hours into her search, she spotted movement in some bushes. "As I got closer, here comes three kids running out of the bushes," right in front of her car, she recounted. "I immediately cornered them into a little cul-de-sac."

One of the youngsters gave a name when asked. But she wasn't convinced he was telling the truth. "They seemed too scared for kids just out there playing," she said.

She asked another searcher "to keep an eye on the kids while I try to find a policeman," she said.

The boys were sitting on a curb when KING-TV reporter Jennifer Cabala noticed them and called authorities.

The boys, who'd been reported missing late Wednesday, told investigators they'd hidden from search-and-rescue crews because they feared getting in trouble after spending the night in a field, police said.

"The boys explained they had gone into an easement across from their houses where the grass and weeds are approximately 3 feet high," Monroe police spokeswoman Debbie Willis said. "They ... lay there as they heard their parents calling and the helicopter overhead. They were scared they would get in trouble."

The three boys — Dylan Lewis, 11, and brothers Ethyan and Elijah "Eli" Gertschitz, 10 and 8 — appeared to be fine, Willis said.

Police officers, a sheriff's helicopter, a bloodhound and volunteer search-and-rescue teams had looked for the boys since their families reported them missing Wednesday night. The boys, last seen about 9:45 p.m., failed to return to their homes in 18700 block of 137th Street Southeast.

"Dad [Gertschitz] was out calling them in," Willis said. "He thought he heard their footsteps, but he could never locate them."

"I love kids," Seaward said. "It breaks my heart when a parent has a kid lost."

Charles E. Brown: 206-464-2206 or cbrown@seattletimes.com. Lewis Kamb: 206-464-2341 or lkamb@seattletimes.com.