CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Efforts continued in Clearlake on Tuesday to locate a San Francisco girl reported missing Sunday afternoon.
By Tuesday evening more than 48 hours had passed since 9-year-old Mikaela Renee Lynch’s family reported her missing to police.
The blue-eyed, brown-haired child – weighing 70 pounds and standing 4 feet tall – left her family’s Harbor Drive vacation home on Sunday afternoon, according to police.
She has autism, is unable to speak and does not respond when called, according to a new flier issued by Klaas Kids on Tuesday.
When she left the family’s home she was unclothed. She reportedly had a habit of taking off her clothes when hot – Sunday’s weather was warm – and police said her clothes were found left behind. A diaper like the one she was wearing also was found nearby.
As the search entered a new day on Tuesday, police said they had received an important new clue as to where Mikaela went in the form of a surveillance video clip from a neighboring vacation home, as Lake County News has reported.
Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen said the video – which is not being released publicly due to it being evidence in an ongoing investigation – gave searchers a timeframe and a location for the girl.
He said it showed Mikaela running down Harbor Drive in a northerly direction at approximately 1:31 p.m., minutes after her parents had reported her missing to police.
“It solidified what we already believed,” Clausen said.
The girl’s family as well as a large support group were on scene during the search, he said.
The search effort is based at an incident command post housed at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 14970 Lakeview Way in Clearlake. There, police were continuing to invite community members to come and volunteer to take part in the search.
On Tuesday dozens of searchers continued to focus on the general vicinity of the girl’s last known location on Harbor Drive, extending to Highway 53 and Old Highway 53, Clausen said.
Fliers distributed to residents in the area asked that people check their outbuildings, vehicles, crawl spaces and other areas around homes in the event the girl was hiding there.
In addition, Clausen said an aquatic search was conducted, with boats working their way up and down Cache Creek from Highway 53 to the Cache Creek Dam, where flows had been reduced on Sunday.
Between law enforcement personnel and community volunteers, Clausen estimated that the search area covered a total of 10 square miles.
A Cal Fire helicopter was used for the search on Tuesday, as were Cal Fire hand crews, who Clausen said searched the nearby marsh.
He said K9s also have been used extensively in the search to find the girl.
As of Tuesday, no new physical evidence tracing the girl’s location had been found, Clausen said.
In response to questions posed by community members about whether or not registered sex offenders in the vicinity had been checked out for possible connections to the girl’s disappearance, Clausen confirmed that they had.
Regarding search plans for Tuesday night, “We’ll scale them back but we won’t call it all the way off,” said Clausen.
He said the search will resume at full force at daybreak on Wednesday.
Clausen said new resources from agencies around the region are expected to arrive on Wednesday in an effort to allow others to be released.
Control Costa County’s unmanned submarine with sonar and video was used to search the water on Tuesday, with San Francisco County to send its submarine on Wednesday, Clausen said.
In addition to the help from cooperating agencies, the small police department has devoted its resources to finding Mikaela in a case that has gained regional media attention over the last few days.
“It’s taxing, but we can’t complain,” said Clausen. “Our families are still intact.”
Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact the Clearlake Police Department at 707-994-8251 or call 911.
Additional updates will be posted as they become available.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.