On August 10th, 2020, Ryan Normoyle of Closter, New Jersey rented a boat on Lake Tahoe alone and was later determined as missing. Multiple agencies searched for Ryan but were unable to locate him. Ryan’s family reached out to us to see if we could help.
We connected with the local authorities. South Lake Tahoe Police Department was the leading agency investigating Ryan’s case. They shared his phone data with us, which was the key. Luckily, Ryan had his Google location data “accepted” on his phone. Without this, there would have been no hope to know where to look.
The extremely challenging part of this search is that this area is Lake Tahoe’s deepest part, at 1500 to 1600 feet deep. Our equipment is not rated for this depth. I had sold Douglas County and Washoe County their Outland Technology ROV’s (remote operated vehicle) previously. Their equipment is rated for this type of depth. Douglas County agreed to allow us to use their ROV and South Lake Tahoe Police agreed to provide us with a boat and crew for four days. My friend, Ken Gracey from Lake Tahoe, volunteered to help as well. Ken is the organizer of the Nepal search from last year. Just prior to leaving Wisconsin, I was informed that Randy Malm, from the Washoe Sheriff’s Hasty Team, was able to line up the University of California Davis to use their AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle). This can be deployed with no cables and programed to search a grid and collect sonar data to locate items on the bottom. After three days, they had no success.
On September 23rd I flew out to Lake Tahoe. After a couple of days of preparation, we started our search.
Day one went smooth. We eliminated some areas, but the winds picked up around noon and chased us off the lake.
Day two started out not so good. We began to have electrical issues. Running at this depth started to take a toll on the equipment. With 1700’ of cable and ROV, it felt like pulling up a 400-pound anchor. We had to think outside the box. Because I lost power to drive the ROV, but had sonar, we pulled the ROV along the bottom around 1540’ in a search grid. After a few hours of this is when we had a perfect image of a body on the sonar. For some unknown reason, the ROV decided to inherently start to work, allowing me to drive over to identify that it was in fact Ryan. He was at 1551’. I grabbed him with our manipulator. We would then have to pull the sonar cable hand over hand to the surface. We could not get him too far off the bottom before we would lose hold on him. We spent the rest of the day unable bring him to the surface and unfortunately had to leave him.
Day three started out again struggling with electrical issues. We then called in Washoe County Sheriff’s Hasty Team for assistance with their ROV and additional hands. It was now late in the day. We switched a few things over. When we got to the bottom, we now found that we had no sonar, a new problem. So, we ran until dark with the hopes we could get lucky and find him with the camera. No luck and we had to leave without him once again.
Day four, I got to the boat before everyone and made one good ROV between the two ROVs we had. It turned out that one of Douglas’s cables was the problem. I rigged up a small cinch out of one-inch webbing to put over his arm. I adapted the grabber by adding some zip ties to add extra gripping. Washoe Sheriff’s Hastey Team and South Lake Tahoe Fire were there to help. That day, the water was much rougher. We had 2-3’ waves and wind. I was not feeling good about these conditions, as this was to be my last day. The thought that I would know where he was and the possibility of leaving him there, was not going over well. We all agreed we would give it a try, but if we had any problems we would abort. About 30 minutes to get to the bottom and everything worked perfectly. We found Ryan right away. Plan A was to try the strap. That plan did not work. So, we went to plan B. With the extra grip we added, we seemed to have a good hold. We got Ryan all the way up to 580’ when he slipped out of the grabber. All the bouncing from the waves proved to be too much. Aborting at this point was not an option! Everyone put their heads together to make another synch. Again, 30 minutes to get to the bottom and we found him to be in 1565’ now. That plan worked like a charm. I was able to manipulate the cinch perfectly over his arm and near his elbow. We now had Ryan on his way to his family. It took about two hours of hand over hand. Everyone pitched in to get him to the surface.
I can assure you that it takes many volunteers to do what we do. There is no way this recovery could have been pulled off without all the help and cooperation that we had here on Lake Tahoe this week. It takes special people to be able to do this work and we had many stepping up to get Ryan back home.
Our heartfelt condolences go out to Ryan’s family and friends.
Special thanks to:
Our search crew – Ken Gracey, Matt Morrison, Heather Carlquist, Barry Rider and Ron Skibinski.
South Lake Police Department
Douglas County Sheriff’s Department
Washoe County Sheriff’s Hasty Team
UC Davis
South Lake Fire Department
US Coast Guard
Sean Mayfield of Outland Technology
Beth Darst – my support and the editor to correct my spelling and grammatical errors