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Coordinated search efforts continue for couple who went missing in Marin County
A woman who lives across the road from where an elderly couple had been staying before they vanished Friday, February 14 watched as searchers continued the effort to find Carol Kiparsky, 77, and her husband Ian Irwin, 72.
MARIN COUNTY, Calif. - A woman who lives across the road from where an elderly couple had been staying before they vanished Friday, February 14 watched as searchers continued the effort to find Carol Kiparsky, 77, and her husband Ian Irwin, 72.
She saw them when they arrived for their trip to Inverness, which family said they had taken numerous times in the past, a couple of days before they went missing.
“When they first came they drove up in this white car,” said Barbara Bergman. “I saw them when they were getting ready to go and they were packing up.”
Parked in front of the cottage where they’d been staying was the couple’s white Honda Accord. A pair of hiking shoes were visible on the floor of the front passenger side of the vehicle.
Authorities have been operating under the theory that the couple went on a hike the day this disappeared.
They wouldn’t leave all their stuff and their car and just vanish. It’s like somebody picked them up and removed them from the area,” said Jonas Irwin, son of Ian Irwin
At a local volunteer fire department not far from the search area in Inverness doubled as the command post, teams are dispatched to search for Kiparksy and Irwin.
Among the 40 people assisting the effort are four separate K9 teams from CalOES, said Sargent Benton Schneider with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, which is coordinating the search.
At the command post on Tuesday, search groups that included four separate K-9 teams from Cal-OES were dispatched to look for the couple on foot which took place while investigators turned their attention to the couple's finances for clues, which have so far borne fruit.
“We have nothing that indicates that they were out and about in the public in the last since Friday since they were last heard from (the) family,” said Schneider when addressing why investigators recently looked into the couple’s finances.
Another curveball was thrown at the Marin Sheriff’s Office, which is coordinating the search, Tuesday when an elderly went missing in the area of Big Rock Ridge in San Rafael.
Authorities insist that the search for him would not affect the operation to locate Kiparsky and Irwin.
“We still have specific assignments that we wanted to complete today. Once those assignments are completed, if that personnel (is) done, they’re available for another search,” said Sargent Schneider.
By 6 p.m. Tuesday, the search had ended for the day and was expected to pick up Wednesday, although a representative with the Marin County Sheriff’s office said he was uncertain about the extent of the operation.