Missing Elderly Couple Found

**Willowdared** · 09-05-06, 01:03 PM

Not officially identified yet - but likely them. Very sad

Canyon foliage hid Toyota from view

By Tanya Sierra
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 5, 2006

A Toyota Camry belonging to an elderly San Diego couple who have been missing since Aug. 12 was found last night on the side of Harbison Canyon Road, where shrubs and trees kept it hidden from anyone looking out over the canyon.

The bodies of a man and a woman were inside, but the California Highway Patrol would not release their identities until they had been confirmed by the medical examiner.

Volunteers had been searching for Sumio and Betty Takehara since their daughter, Jan Takehara, reported them missing last month.
Jan Takehara arrived at the canyon last night, but did not talk to the media. In an earlier interview, she said her parents apparently had driven off with their dog, Butchy, leaving behind credit cards and medication.

Brian Penning, a California Highway Patrol spokesman, said the car went down a 230-foot embankment and landed on its roof. The woman appeared to have been driving.

“There was no curve, no skid marks, nothing to indicate why the car went off the road,” Penning said.

Penning did not know if the dog's remains were also in the car.

The car was discovered by Randy Wallas, the property's owner, who was taking his dogs for a run when he noticed an unusual smell. The car was hard to see, he said, because it was buried in sand. The Camry was pulled up the slope at 10:15 p.m., and the bodies were transferred to the medical examiner's van.

In the earlier interview Jan Takehara, 56, said her parents had been depressed because it appeared circumstances might drive them apart. Two months earlier, Sumio, 82, had gone on a waiting list at a nursing home for veterans. But the nursing home would not allow Betty to stay there because she is not a veteran.

In that interview Jan Takehara said her father had suffered several strokes and was getting “weaker and weaker.”

“My mom was wondering what was going to happen to her, and how she was going to see Dad every day. She got ill because she wasn't sleeping, and she was worrying so much. They were both depressed.” The couple moved to San Diego in the 1970s from Chicago.

Sumio Takehara, an Army veteran who fought in World War II, worked as a manufacturer's rep. His wife was his secretary.

A few years after their move, they persuaded their daughter and her husband to join them. The couple's son, Craig, stayed in Chicago, but in recent weeks had flown to San Diego to participate in the search for his parents.

Volunteers had canvassed beach areas from Carlsbad south to San Diego, and searched in the East County community of Rancho San Diego, where some callers reported spotting the couple's silver Camry.