Look closely at the rocks behind the hikers in this photograph.
See anything odd? Even the hikers who took the photo didn’t notice it until long after, when they saw it with their own eyes.
Nicole Gergen was hiking with two other people when she noticed a red flame of hair out of the corner of her eye. And then she saw it move. The same red hair appeared in their pictures later.
Peter Biava, one of Gergen’s hiking partners, later remarked on how improbable it was that they were there. “This bouldering trail is not on the main trail, and not many hikers ever veer off of the main trail.”
Had they not strayed off the beaten path, they wouldn’t have noticed the red hair, nor would they have saved Saylor Guilliam’s life.
The Girl Before She Was Stranded
Saylor Guilliam was 22, living in Ventura, California, and working as an office assistant at her mother, Sandy Lipkin, patent and trademark law office, responsible for maintaining the filing system and reminding clients about deadlines.
It had been four years since she graduated from high school, and also since she met Brenden Vega. They dated for a few months in 2010, and since then, they’ve remained close friends.
Around the time of the incident, Brenden was working as the general manager of a Domino’s outlet. He had worked his way up from the position of a delivery driver and had his whole life ahead of him.
Saylor, too, was learning the ropes of adulthood. Earlier that day, on March 16, 2014, she was with her father, learning to drive a manual-transmission car.
According to an article in VC Star, Lipkin returned home from shopping at 8:30 pm and Saylor was nowhere to be seen. She immediately called her father, who said he had dropped her off hours before.
Neither parent knew where she was. Lipkins was growing concerned, but Saylor sometimes came home late. When the worried mother finally acted the next day, something bad had already happened.
When Saylor Guilliams Screamed for Hours
Around 4 pm that day, Saylor and Brenden had gone hiking along the Cold Spring Trail in Montecito. They had hiked together many times before, since Brenden was an avid outdoors enthusiast.
This was one of many hikes they’d done before. But according to Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Kelly Hoover’s statement, they were unprepared for the conditions.
The Tangerine Falls area along the trail is rocky and steep. Reaching it often requires crawling and scrambling over dangerous boulders. That’s where Saylor and Brenden were hiking when daylight started to fade.
The worst part is that they had no hiking lights. They tried to light the path with their cell phone flashlights, but that wasn’t enough. At one point, Saylor landed badly on a rock and fractured her leg.
This unfortunate accident was the beginning of a series of mishaps. In this state, Brenden tried to carry the injured Saylor but fell and shattered his glasses and broke his elbow. During the fall, Saylor also broke her ankle.
Since the girl couldn’t walk, Brenden went to get help, or at least get some cellphone reception. That was the last time she saw him. Saylor spent that night and the rest of the next day yelling for help.
She was starting to lose consciousness. “At some point I didn’t think anyone would find me. No one would save me, and I would end up dead.” Saylor told Huffington Post. By late afternoon the next day, her lungs had given up, and she had stopped screaming.
By then, she was delirious and lay face down in mud and leaves, flies buzzing around her, with no hope of being saved.
Stumbling Upon Brenden Vega
March 17, 10:30 am. The day after Brenden left Saylor to get help, a couple hiking on the lower section of Cold Spring Trail found a body 10-15 feet off the trail, in heavy brush and rocks below the path.
One of them hiked back out to call 911 and report the body. Once alerted, Sheriff’s deputies and the Sheriff’s search and rescue team arrived on scene. Because of the body’s location, it took them several hours to extract it.
It was Brenden Vega. After leaving for help, he fell 20-30 feet down a rocky ledge and succumbed to fatal injuries. When the authorities were almost done retrieving Brenden’s body, they got a call from another group of hikers.
Nicole Gergen, 29, a fourth-year pediatrics resident at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island, her boyfriend, Joe Villapiano, and his brother-in-law, Peter Biava, were boulder climbing in the Tangerine Falls area.
They also took some pictures while doing so. Because it was Monday and the route was dangerous, no one else was there. They were just 100 yards from where Brenden’s body was discovered when Nicole saw red hair from the corner of her eye.
Then she saw it move. Before setting out on the hike, Biava suggested the group not bring their cellphones to better connect with nature. Luckily, Villapiano had rejected that suggestion and brought his.
“It’s a miracle she was still alive and mind-blowing to think what she had gone through when we found her,” Biava wrote in a Reddit comment detailing the events of that day. The group gave Saylor any supplies they had, and then Villapiano called 911.
Meanwhile, Lipkins had spent much of that day searching for her daughter. She’d called her friends, posted on Facebook, and even filed a missing person report. One of Saylor’s friends told her Saylor had gone to Santa Barbara with Brenden.
Saylor’s dad then started searching for Brenden, hoping to find his daughter. Then, at 4 pm, Lipkins got a text from Villapiano saying he and two friends had found her daughter.
The Rescue of Saylor Guilliams
Search and Rescue crews, firefighters from the Montecito and Santa Barbara County fire departments, and U.S. Forest Service personnel responded to the scene and arranged to transport Saylor to a hospital by helicopter.
Because the girl was found off the trail, emergency services asked the group to display anything bright they had so they could narrow down their position. Gergen waved her hot pink sneakers in response.
Meanwhile, Jeff Guilliams, Saylor’s dad, who was also a former Fleet Training Specialist for the Navy SEALs, was racing toward the trail at upwards of 125 mph after learning his daughter was found.
Saylor was eventually airlifted to the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. She had broken ankles, a broken arm, dehydration, and other blunt force trauma injuries, so she was operated on until 1 am.
Later that afternoon, she was kept in the ICU under heavy sedation. They scheduled a second surgery two days later. Saylor was on the road to recovery, but they hadn’t told her the bad news about Brenden yet.
On Wednesday morning, March 19th, Saylor had been in and out of surgeries for a few days when she was told that Brenden had died trying to find help.
“My daughter said nobody knew him like me. She wants to go to the memorial. She wants to talk about him. She wants everyone to know how great he was,” Lipkin revealed in an interview.
In the same interview, she confessed the family was struggling to feel grateful. “It’s hard to be happy when I know another mother is grieving.” But despite her grief, Brenden’s mother delayed his funeral so that Saylor could attend in person.
The incident permanently changed both families. The Vega family had lost a son, and in his honor, they decided to live each day to the fullest just like he had. Saylor’s family also went through permanent changes.
The Road after Recovery
11 months after the tragic incident, Saylor had gone through a total of five surgeries. She resumed classes at Ventura College, including a course on holistic healing that her injuries inspired her to take.
Jeff Guilliams, her father, realized he had been away from his daughter all the time. So he retired from his 14-year Navy career to spend more time with her. And Saylor proved to be a Navy man’s daughter.
The injuries didn’t stop her from exploring the outdoors. She went hiking again in 2015, but having learned her lesson, she stayed on the trail this time.
Biava, one of the hikers who rescued her, would spot her in their photographs later,
and would post them online. Gergen, herself a doctor, was grateful they found Saylor in time.
When they learned of Brenden’s death, it was hard for them to swallow too. The whole incident is a cautionary tale for hiking hobbyists. The activity requires utmost caution. And sometimes, the danger isn’t even accidental.
Abby Williams and Libby German were two teenage girls who went on a hike and were killed by an older man with a gun. But not every case is as grim. Often, people out in the wilderness survive against all odds.
Like Poon Lim, who survived 133 days alone on a raft after a German U-boat sank his ship. Then three Brazilian fishermen finally found him and brought him to safety.
